SoulographieSeries-s..

 SOULOGRAPHIE: OUR GENOCIDES a commemorative performance cycle by Erik Ehn 149 Power St. Providence, RI 02906 [email protected] EVERYMAN JACK OF YOU by Erik Ehn 1
EVERY MAN JACK OF YOU One (A twenty‐three year old man drives a car on a winding road, late at night; an odometer reads out the miles in supertitle. The man eats crunchy food out of a cellophane bag. He is wearing black wool pants, a long‐sleeved white shirt and a tightly knotted tie. His feet are bare. He sweats heavily. He listens to a magic NPR station ‐ Carl Kassel played backwards. The back seat is filled with neat cardboard boxes ‐ this man is a traveling salesman. The ghost of Julius Caesar appears in the road in front of him.) CAESAR The small actions of the pine branches are cat‐cock fur roughed into midnight. And everything abrades to fluid. Pine acids, backwards radio, motor surging scratch against cruise control, and the wounds of Julius Caesar too. (The driver opens his fly and starts to masturbate; he uses the cellophane bag to save his pants.) Spanish fly flavored pork‐rinds drill paprika cavities up into aluminum nerves. Coffee scratches fluid out the lower lids and from the soft female flesh at the inside pinches. Soda pops rub two different weaves of rayon together inside your ear. Hair cut scratches your high starched collar sending static radio, and the boil of stations renders night to a shiny mass. (The crinkling bag and the radio static rise to a din. The car fax quickens. The man zips up; Caesar disappears. The man tries to send a fax and make a call at the same time.) JACK Interference. Honey. Gone to ‐ faraway. Will make this the last leg, and then back again soon. The odometer puts me in mind of ‐ (The odometer turns into a slot machine. The car goes away and Jack is playing the nickel slots obsessively. Caesar’s Palace. A cocktail waitress enters; she wears a toga that doesn’t quite cover her sex. She wears gartered stockings: shiny, translucent. Muzak plays: Inna‐gadda‐da‐vida.) CAESARETTE Cocktail? JACK The air in Tahoe ‐ CAESARETTE Cocktail? JACK The air in Tahoe would be good for me ‐ Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
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CAESARETTE Complimentary cocktail? JACK The air in Tahoe would be good for me if I ever breathed it. (A surge of romantic music. Jack turns to face her.) If you were the farmer’s daughter we could be in the same joke together. CAESARETTE Cocktail? (Muzak resumes; they maintain eye contact.) JACK I’ll take a Rob Roy, a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned, and kind of mix em all up together, okay? (He slips a finger in her mouth; she doesn’t resist.) Tastes like nickels, I bet. (He takes his fingers out.) CAESARETTE Towelette? (She hands him one. She crosses away; Jack goes to the bathroom.) JACK The air in Tahoe is faraway. (The waitress tells this story to an old Eastern European Woman playing at another machine.) CAESARETTE In the bathroom, he uses the towelette to clean his gender; it stings. He smashes a mirror and uses a fragment to flash a sequence into the electric eye of the auto‐flush urinal. He faxes the towelette to his wife. JACK (The area code.) 918. (His magazine‐beautiful, 18 year old wife Clair wears a tight blue shirt and heavy eye make‐up. She’s going to the bathroom in Tulsa ‐ the fax comes up between her legs.) CLAIR He has sores. E.E. WOMAN I don’t speak English. (The wife finishes. Three martyrs broken on the wheels of the slot machine fall into alignment. Their chests are open and their hearts are cherries. 10,000 nickels pour out of the machine ‐ rats eat them before Jack can get back to them. Jack and his wife Clair Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
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wander outside, drunk. They stop at the same time, although they remain in separate worlds.) JACK The fuchsia berries are pendulous. CLAIR (Reading the fax.) “Keno, Eggos and vinyl.” (She sits down, cross‐legged. Jack falls; he puts his head in her lap. She still doesn’t see him.) CAESARETTE (Delivering a drink to the Eastern European Woman.) When he goes to the diner ‐ JACK When she was wet, she was as soft as Irish moss, and tiny veined flowers dangled from the tops of her dewey hairs. CAESARETTE He has the waffles. He plays Keno with a big black crayon according to where the syrup collects in the grid of his breakfast. The wool of his pants crackles like cat‐sex against the arched back of the night. But it is not night anymore. JACK (Singing.) I didn’t get in for five years and then it’s too dry to push A bird in hand is a flip‐book ‐ there’s a better one in the bush (The odometer says: “Five Years Pass.”) CAESARETTE When he goes back to his room at five in the morning, all he can get is the Keno channel, for five years. Pipes break and he has to live off air conditioner run‐off for water, until rats eat through the wires. Then he’s out, one spring, up a hill to fetch a coin bucket full of fresh. Poor Clair is his second wife and they are discalced. (Jack starts to crawl up a snowy mountain: a mountain like in a beer commercial.) E.E. WOMAN Caesarette, take a break. (She does. E.E. Woman takes over as narrator ‐ playing two slot machines at once, now.) Caesarette cleans herself in the break room. The break room is filled with precious jewels and clean cotton towels warm from the dryer. A massive pearl comes out of her mouth. He read a story like this in the track locker room in his Catholic high school. CLAIR There is an extra set of footprints in the snow. The big guns are starting in the hills. Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
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(Caesarette walks backwards in front of Jack. Carl Kassel crawls backwards, talks backwards, away. Distant guns.) E.E. WOMAN The pearl is slick and iridescent; the waitress has been chewing black licorice. She rubs the pearl on her privacy, lubrication and two fingers of pressure, outside, in, a 360 degree tongue. Hips rock forward, rider to the pommel, and the pearl sluices up her vagina, held there, controlled back and forth by the muscles inside. Lips demurring open, shut, with a slight viscous click. Pearl’s an eyeball. It sees the sun that morning, her head goes back, and she’s blind. CLAIR He comes to the ice legs of Caesarette. He falls asleep as ice water comes to body temperature in his mouth. (I can’t see a thing.) Two (In Jack’s motel room ‐ the blinds drawn. The TV shows keno. Jack has taped a waffle iron to the ceiling. He stands on the bed, his left hand forced against the iron’s live surface. On his right hand, a catcher’s mitt. He masturbates into the mitt. Meanwhile, elsewhere, a still‐drunk Clair uses a combination payphone/slot machine.) CLAIR Jack? Ja ‐ Jack? (Jackpot. Nickels galore. Jack gets off. The Caesarette comes by the phone booth with a bucket and collects the nickels, the rats in her wake nibbling coins and toes.) CAESARETTE He’s down to a dollar. Five years. He’s in a dollar motel in the desert between Tahoe and Reno. (A recorded voice comes over the phone.) VOICE We’re sorry. (Clair is suddenly alone on stage. She sits in Jack’s motel room and smokes. In the distance, at a fair, Jack stands next to a large clown‐face with an open mouth. Baseballs are fast‐pitched into the mouth; Jack feels each impact in his chest.) CLAIR Neon serpents, diamond backs, abstract themselves through sand, motile and repetitive. The catcher’s mitt into which he cashed out gets pregnant the way a horseshoe crab does, tight in it’s shell, and gives birth to baseballs. The balls are hum‐babied against Jack’s chest until he comes up cherry. (The pitches stop, and Jack shows the sacred heart.) Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
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The last one unravels ‐ the string is d.n.a. ‐ the serpent string leads Jack out into the desert. The line follows an extra set of footprints in the sand. There’s a ball of putty in the center. Jack picks it up and takes an impression of his teeth. (The clown’s gone; Jack is crawling across the desert floor, chasing a ball of putty. He makes and impression of his grimace and lays it down.) The desert floor speaks in Caesarette’s voice. CAESARETTE He puts his hand to his face ‐ the waffle grid transfers. His features are under the control of this pattern. The other baseballs fasten in the sand and come to maturity. They move forward through the heat‐waves. Their faces are baseball‐kid; kid gloves. Tongues between the fingers. The kids finish the crossword on Dad’s face with invisible ink off their tongues. The action of these tongues is contagious. (A hand puppet rises from the sand and licks Jack’s face until Jack’s tongue is moving too. The hand goes away.) CLAIR The desert fantasizes about Marine World USA. The seals: licorice tongues, multiple, moving in one mouth of clear water. CAESARETTE He moves his own tongue. He puts his mouth down on the labia of the desert, and kippers fly to seals. (The sound of women suffering in the distance.) CLAIR Suffering women under the maguey on the sides. Left there. CAESARETTE You will never forget this. (Really can’t see.) Three (A tree; Jack stage left and the E.E. Woman stage right. The E.E. Woman is young now ‐ appears about 20, is 15; her clothes are the same she wore when she was old. Jack reaches around the trunk and unbuttons her orange sweater. Caesar and Mark Antony lean down from the branches with nooses ‐ an electric cord for the woman, a belt for the man. Clair reads a series of postcards.) CLAIR “Dear Clair. I die of auto‐erotic asphyxia at age 28 in Kansas City, Kansas. The radio is playing.” I don’t hear any radio, Jack. (The nooses tighten.) Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
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“In the Lutheran church nearby it is crayfish time ‐ the Swedes are singing and the red shells cry buzzbomb harmonies.” (Whistle, pop ‐ bombs.) “They are putting on a play and white cheesecloth is blowing. The Lawyer and the Levite and the Samaritan. Altar girl and the massive candle. Wax on my chest. This heart is sacred. The veins in the eyes crackle to flame. Pearl expensed.” (The E.E. Woman and Jack are off the floor. Clair speaks for herself.) The object of his attachment is on the other side of a tree in the cool forest in Tuzla... I mean Tulsa. (Looking at the woman.) I would rather hang from the tree with her than cut her down and dig, Jack. (The wife cuts the woman down; buttons her sweater and buries her. The sound of tigers moving through the forest.) JACK (His eyes bugged large.) Crayfish eyeball. Pop. The End. Every Man Jack of You 10/30/09
DIAMOND DICK by Erik Ehn 1
DIAMOND DICK 6/21/10 (including survivor testimony, contemporary news accounts, and material adapted from the research in various forms of Scott Ellsworth) A. Background (Apart, night. Sandman wears heavy shoes.) DICK Wait, I’m‐ I’m wait, wait I’m – Wait, I get ahead of myself. WILLIE Sandman smells of tobacco and pancakes. He waits for me all day. (Daybreak.) LOULA (To husband John, both in bed.) Call Dreamland. (They get up, get dressed.) ANDREW J. SMITHERMAN (Editor, black‐owned Tulsa Star.) A year later, a black deputy sherrif, John Smitherman, is kidnapped by the Klan; cut off his ear; put it inside his mouth. MARY Ear in the mouth: ability to speak is blocked by drowned ability to hear. Tinitus widespread in Tulsa, the smashing of the derricks. JOHN, LOULA Rats dragging cinders. Boom boom boom. MARY Oil makes it night. Telegraph makes it starry. News makes starlight, and peoples night. JOHN LOULA Boom boom boom boom Boom boom boom Frisco rail south, midland line east, Standpipe Hill west, Booker T., north North Detroit, Pine and landscape. Greenwood Avenue Runs right through. Steam Engine at Thompson’s Diamond Dick 6/21/11 Works the churn, ice cream, morphine Hamburger Kelly’s 2
Choctaw beer. Doc’s Beanery The Little Café Dream Land ANDREW John and Loula Williams’ Dreamland, seven hundred fifty seats. White owned Dixie, across the street, one‐thousand seats. MARY Papers fill the sky, sky of paper, pages, flammable heaven, Tulsa Star, the Tribune, and the Oklahoma Sun. JOHN, LOULA Lawton Muldrow Wagoner Anadarko Holdenville Okemah Madill Nowata ANDREW In the ten years prior Nineteen eleven to twenty one Twenty one Black men Two black women Lynched in Ardmore Norman, Wewoka Mannford Eufaula Purcell Idabel Oklahoma City Shawnee Diamond Dick 6/21/11 3
SANDMAN Niggers with money. There’s your problem right there.
Diamond Dick 6/21/11 4
B. Mon, 5/30/1921: The Elevator (Bones washed in water make a cage. Meanwhile, a parade takes place. WWI vets; autos, trick ropers.) SANDMAN Happens in a cage. Precisely at this moment… Dick Rowland/Sarah Page ANDREW Dick Rowland, nineteen, Born Jimmie Jones. He and his two sisters orphaned. Damie Ford Ran a grocery store, Took him in From the streets of Vinita DAMIE That's how I became Jimmie's Mama. ANDREW Years later Damie and her son move to Tulsa; Damie had family, the Rowlands, Jimmie takes Rowland as his own last name, and his favorite first name, Dick. SANDMAN Team of rats drags a line of heavy shoes. Gravity asks oriole for wings and everything gravity touches is heaviness, heavier for wings of iron now. ANDREW No toilets for blacks at the shine parlor. Colored restroom over in the Drexel Building, 319 South Main. Elevator. ANDY BROWN Daddy said Dick was going with Sarah Page, the young, white elevator operator. He met her when he stocked the concession stand where she worked. ANDREW In late May of 1921, the elevator operator at the Drexel Building is a seventeen‐year‐
old white woman named Sarah Page. In Tulsa from Missouri, she rents a room on North Boston. Page is going to a local business school at the same time, a sensible career move. While Tulsa is still on a construction boom, some landlords are hiring African American women to replace their white elevator operators… Diamond Dick 6/21/11 5
TRIBUNE The girl is an orphan and is attending a local business college and running an elevator on off hours. ANDREW The pair might have been lovers. Damie Ford later suggests as much, as does Samuel M. Jackson, who operated a funeral parlor in Greenwood at the time of the riot. ‘I'm going to tell you the truth,’ Jackson told riot historian Ruth Avery a half century later. SAMUEL M. JACKSON He could have been going with the girl. You go through life and you find that somebody likes you. That's all there is to it. (Dick and Sarah wear each other’s shoes.) SANDMAN (Throughout, bolded dates are projected or otherwise emphasized.) Monday, May 30, 1921. ANDREW On Memorial Day, although most stores are closed, Rowland and Page are working. (Memorial Day parade. Main Street. Morning.) Sarah’s on duty to take Drexel employees up to look at the parade from the top floors. Dick and the shine parlor are out for the parade traffic. (Shoes and shine.) Dick Rowland enters the elevator operated by Sarah Page, at the rear of the Drexel Building. SANDMAN That moment like a shoe – many small blind eyes and one big tongue. DAMIE This is a very basic exercise, honey. Jimmie, back to work. Why am I so strict? So you will not think it, you will do it – I mean you will say no and leave. SANDMAN (A line and a stage direction.) Seven ways of gripping. “Please/No.” (Dick moves towards the elevator.) ANDREW A clerk from Renberg’s, a clothes store down on the first floor of the Drexel, rushes to the elevator, where he finds Sarah Page, distraught. The clerk calls the police. CLERK Yes? Diamond Dick 6/21/11 6
SARAH Please. SANDMAN She is committed to paper to a white sheet of herself. (But they’re not there yet; Dick regards Sarah from outside the cage.) ANDREW No record exists as to what Sarah Page actually tells the police when they first interview her. There is no all‐points bulletin; the investigation is low‐key. A fearful Rowland makes for home, where he stays inside, blinds drawn. MARY, SANDMAN As if it were night MARY As if the paper had burned already and the bridges were down and gravity had taken the wings of the crow and flown into moonless river to drown. MARY, SANDMAN As if it were night SANDMAN Or you could make your own jail for yourself. But that’s like trying to hold your breath until you die. You breathe out. DICK (Outside the cage, to Sarah, inside.) I know you. (In the cage with Sarah. Elevator up. He exits.) SANDMAN Goes to the bathroom. (Returns to the cage.) SARAH Where we going today? DICK No place, really. Down and out. SANDMAN Bride of Frankenstein. One note suitable for this – (Dick stumbles on his way out and steps on Sarah’s foot. She sings the Bride of Frankenstein scream.) Diamond Dick 6/21/11 7
He was the orphan. One not suitable for this Memorial Day Parade. Meanwhile, elsewhere. WILLIE Sister at the Dixie across Greenwood she is playing the little sister the bounty of spring time moving through berries and sister across the stage she laid out clothes for me on a chair by the bed this morning for use tonight – promenade. Four boys with a date between them nexting, prior: dream I had of Liberata in a sheath, hair flowered back; we’ll take our chances. At four a call for lynching. SANDMAN (Re: parade.) They rehearse their boots in the mud for Memorial – in memory of marching and rapid assembly they rehearsed their boots today. WILLIE Now the humidity releasing itself to flower, the sunset and vanish with the scent of all openings, I, we are ready for the dance, Booker T. Where are the chaperones? SANDMAN Diamond is diamond is diamond is not his name. ROBERT FAIRCHILD, SR. I shined shoes with Dick Rowland. He was an orphan and had quit school to take care of himself. The Drexel Building was the only place downtown where we were allowed to use the restroom. Dick was a quiet kind of fella. Never in no trouble. When he went to use the bathroom... in the elevator he slipped and bumped her, she screamed, he ran, and was accused of raping a white woman. In broad daylight? The Tribune wrote a story that put a crowd at the Court House: To lynch a Negro tonight. The Tribune called him “Diamond Dick.” Me, or nobody on Greenwood ever heard that name for him before. They invented it. Dick Rowland was poor as me. Neither of us probably ever saw a real diamond. SANDMAN Gravity asks a bird for wings, on gravity’s back they are heavier; gravity gets its wings and sinks the faster, the more the mass. What is the bird, and why? Oriole – terror. What is the tree and why? Cottonwood – dream. Returned veterans, the terror, And power in them. Birds; machines such as cottonwood. Boom, boom, boom. An ear in the mouth you are deaf; unwritten as a prostitute autobiography. (Dick, tumbled down, polishes Sandman’s shoes.) Diamond Dick 6/21/11 8
DICK Trigger squeak shoes. SURVIVORS May we find God in this. May we find God in this. Jesus, Jesus. May we find God in this. May we all grow closer to God through this. ANDREW Dick Rowland is arrested on Greenwood Avenue by two Tulsa police officers, Detective Henry Carmichael, white, and Patrolman Henry C. Pack, one of a handful of African Americans on the city's seventy‐five man force. Told that her adopted son is in custody, Damie Ford loses no time in hiring a prominent white attorney to defend him. The Tulsa Tribune breaks the news in its afternoon edition. Original bound volumes of the now defunct newspaper no longer exist in their entirety. Before the microfilming is done years later, someone tears out a front‐page article and nearly all the editorial page. DICK Up a winding stairway. ANDREW The Tribune runs a story titled “To Lynch Negro Tonight.” Diamond Dick 6/21/11 9
Interlude: Belton LOULA Tell me about this place. ANDREW Late summer of 1920, Tulsa experiences an incident that proves to be the single most important precursor to the race riot. While all the participants are white, it binds across the color line. On Saturday night, August 21, 1920, a Tulsa cab driver named Homer Nida is hired by two young men and one young woman to drive them to a dance in Sapulpa. Along the way, past Red Fork, one of the men takes out a revolver and forces Nida to the side of the road. Beating the driver with the pistol, the gunman demands money. When the driver cannot produce sufficient, the gunman shoots Nida in the belly and kicks him to the highway. The trio speed off in the stolen cab. A passing motorist discovers Nida a soon after, and runs him to a hospital. The next day, police in Nowata, acting on a tip, arrest an eighteen‐year‐old, one‐time telephone company employee named Roy Belton. He admits that he had been in the taxi‐cab, and that he and his accomplices had planned on a robbery. He says the shooting was an accident. Belton claims the gun was damaged when he hit Nida in the head with it, that it had gone off by mistake while he was tying to fix it. Tulsa County Sheriff Jim Woolley later hears rumors that if Nida dies, the courthouse will be mobbed and Belton will be lynched. Saturday, August 28, 1920, Homer Nida dies. In reporting the news of his death in the afternoon’s edition, the Tulsa Tribune quotes the driver’s widow as saying that Belton deserved “to be mobbed, but the other way is better.” A number of Tulsans think otherwise. By 11:00 p.m. that evening, hundreds of whites gather outside of the courthouse. A delegation, some with handkerchiefs over their faces, soon come with shotguns. They enter the building and demand that Sherriff Woolley hand Belton over. Wolley claims he tried to talk the mob down, but his efforts are minor or treated as such. Belton is displayed on the courthouse steps. “We got him boys,” his abductors shout, “We’ve got him.” They put Belton in Nida’s taxi, stolen from impound. They drive out past Red Fork, in a one mile long line of cars. Not far from where Nida had been shot, the procession stops; Belton is taken from the cab and interrogated. But when a rumor spreads that a posse is in hot pursuit, everyone’s back in their cars and out to Jenks. The police finally catch up with the mob along the Jenks road about three miles Diamond Dick 6/21/11 10
southwest of Tulsa. Belton is once again taken from the cab, and then walked to a roadside sign. A nearby farm provides the rope. Belton is lynched. Among the crowd – estimated to be in the hundreds — were members of the Tulsa police, who had been instructed by Chief Gustafson not to intervene. “Any demonstration from an officer,” he later asserts, “would have started gun play and dozens of innocent people would have been killed and injured.” The lynching of Roy Belton casts a pall over black Tulsa. For even though Homer Nida, Roy Belton, and the lynching party itself had all been white, there was no escaping the conclusion that – Diamond Dick 6/21/11 11
C. May 31, 1921 LOULA End of School celebrations. WILLIE At dawn a rehearsal for the Memorial Day parade, muster and down the film pours, the mind of the projector is mighty diamond, I am dressed, addressed, dead letter, Diamond Dick in custody, “to lynch Negro tonight,” paper – it rattles like film, the surge, jail, to and fro, my colleagues, my many, we, yes, dressed, fructure of patience, having dreamed, sister patient as a bullet in a chamber or a bullet in uncooked dough waiting for the oven to open it – (Meanwhile his sister Eufala enacts the school play about farmland bounty; she’s in silence in the world of the play, but we hear her thoughts.) EUFALA Night coming on. WILLIE To my mother and father’s Dreamland where diamond mind explodes. JOHN Wait. WILLIE Ready, ready, sister, school play, cross town at Dixie: preparing a picnic for a visiting stranger, hilarious and sweet, summer season swinging in, jokes written by old folks for a mentality of five, redeemed by immaculate minds leaning forward into culture through trash of props and signs; Dixie stage. I/we stop, dressed to the nines, dressed like we were stepping up to a microphone… where have the chaperones gotten to? (Night sky is a candlelight vigil; candle touches the angel of newsprint, a page ignites, sends burning letters out in signal.) TRIBUNE “To Lynch Negro Tonight.” WILLIE, EUFALA And up a winding stair. (Ranbyoshi – a long, slow, square pattern dance up an invisible stair, for Brother, for Sister.) WILLIE EUFALA The everything of the everything. Working at ideas, fleetly overlapping each other’s jokes, adjusting their ties – taking Diamond Dick 6/21/11 12
up the whole sidewalk. Shadow safely in shadow. Nighttime then is pure meaning. Mostly. Mostly. Mostly. SANDMAN Sunset (7:34 p.m.) (A tree coughs. Itches.) “Let us have the nigger.” 8:20 p.m. (Three of something round and overripe, are put in a paper bag and offered up by a young man to someone unseen, on a higher physical level. The things break out of the bag.) Three whites at courthouse, demand Rowland; are turned away. 9:00 p.m. (Per The Front Page: 1920’s newsroom. Clackety clack; eagerness. All‐black staff. Spoken dialogue through this section has the feel of a school play.) ANDREW Come on boys, let's go downtown. (Twenty‐five of something impenetrable slide off a pitchfork.) SANDMAN Twenty‐five armed African Americans offer their services to defend the jail; offer declined. 9:30 p.m. (“How Great Thou Art,” sung as if written serially on white orchid petals, mixed. The petals are soaked in alcohol, grabbed in clumps thrown in the air. Mid‐air, they are set on fire.) White mob outside the courthouse grows to two‐thousand. Passing the basket on the Sabbath of the Danger God. 10:00 p.m. (A brick is baked, cracked open. Inside: a vial of blue dye, drunk. Tongue stuck out.) A group of black men, 75 deep, return to the courthouse. ANDREW (Almost a question.) He won’t be lynched now. We will not let him be lynched. Ready To take life If need be To uphold The law Diamond Dick 6/21/11 13
SANDMAN They offer their services; offer refused. Then it happens. John McQueen, a white deputy, approaches Johnny Cole, an armed African American veteran who is leaning at an open car door. Indicating the army issue .45 Colt automatic that Cole is holding, Mr. McQueen asks: McQUEEN Nigger, what are you doing with that pistol? COLE I'm going to use it if I need to. McQUEEN No, you give it to me. COLE Like hell I will. (Together they tear a leaf of kale into the shape of a gun. They tear the gun into small pieces and eat it. A star explodes: a flashbulb.) SANDMAN McQueen tries to take the gun away from the vet. A shot. The white mob – police among them – open fire on the African American men, who fire in kind. SHERRIFF An hour later twenty‐five armed Negroes marched to the courthouse down Sixth Street. I met them and urged them to disperse, that the Negro prisoner was safe and would not be taken out of the jail. They went away but returned shortly with many more armed blacks. I disarmed two of the Negroes quietly but did not order my deputies to disarm all of them because I thought that would have meant a general riot at that time. I thought I could get them into a frame of mind to leave. Just then a Negro on the Sixth street side of the courthouse fired a shot. Instantly all the Negroes began to fire into the air, running away as they did. Then the whites who were armed drew their guns and I went back into the building. The race war was on and I was powerless to stop it. I took the Negro prisoner away at 8 o'clock the next morning. (Sense of an ending. Then, opening a bag of ashes with knives. White deputies smear their faces. They pull ribbons from the hems of young girls’ dresses and make armbands.) ANDREW The crowd gets more and more belligerent. The Negro is shot so many times in his chest, and men from the onlookers are slashing him with knives. SANDMAN Diamond Dick 6/21/11 14
I will banana leaf and ash face you. I will whistle and drum you. I will come for you in the night. ANDREW Outside of police headquarters on Second Street, perhaps as many as five‐hundred white men and boys are sworn‐in by police officers as “Special Deputies.” Some are provided with badges or ribbons to mark this changed status. McQUEEN (Ornamenting a deputy.) Get a gun and get a nigger. ANDREW Whites break into downtown pawnshops, and hardware stores, stealing – “borrowing” – guns and ammunition. J.W. McGee, owner of a sporting goods shop on Second Street, later testifies that a Tulsa police officer helped hand out the guns taken from his store. SANDMAN 10:30 p.m. The night is boiled and falls from the bone and the bone is rendered for stock and thrown to the dog and the dog has died and there’s the shit and death to deal with; the crowd races apart from itself. The one shot is a signal. Every surprise is a signal. The shooting begins in deep earnest on Sixth Street and Boulder Avenue. ANDREW Two dead Negroes at the depot of the San Francisco line. FLORENCE Mud. (Not running; walking, walking a long way.) EUFALA Before running, sorting by walking long distances. Sorting to be near. To be far. To be gone forever. IRENE SCOFIELD Early in the evening I and about forty others started out of the town and walked to a little town about fifteen miles away. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 15
D. The Riot/Movie Night SANDMAN A short space of time. i)
Movies EUFALA The story in a teacup. My brother dresses for prom with his three friends. They are one man, expanded. There is something broken in the dance plans; people are not where they are or who they are supposed to be. On the way to the dance, three people away in the fire of shadow. Willie goes to Dreamland to see our father and mother. Men press in to interrupt the show; butterflies fly Willie upstairs to Henry. A man wipes away the film and tells everybody: “go home.” I am in a school play at the Dixie. Night sweeps me away. That’s – eight. (On stage, standing sideways, fruit filled half‐gourd in her hands.) One: I’m in a play. I am holding a gourd fulla berries out to a man in a play, a school play in the second theater, longer and more empty, Dixie, not far. SANDMAN Hear her say – EUFALA (A line from the play.) “These many things…” SANDMAN The little sister whose experience of the night – WILLIE Is separate from mine, imagined, with images flattened and repeated, in a small school play in a large dark place. Medieval size differences, gigantic adults next to tiny children or vise versa. SANDMAN The Middle Ages walks sideways by. Any flatness, any hand of power can move over any idea and kill you to the point of the Middle Ages. EUFALA Stage is a tiny hole, a spy hole, and sideways, my ear is against it, I hear you. WILLIE And my not‐being‐there will lay right over your not‐being here and I tell you we will be as good as married, shadow in shadow arrayed. Which shadow wears the other for show? SANDMAN (Announcing the second of the eight scenes of the Willie‐Eufala night.) Diamond Dick 6/21/11 16
Two. WILLIE (To Friend.) Help me with these cufflinks. FRIEND You’re the mayor? WILLIE I’m the year. EUFALA Flower in pocket. FRIEND And you want to be governor. WILLIE I want to be the news. The telegraph station. People come and go. I want to live the way you say “this is so.” To be legal. To be legend. Written down and still in‐process. Living ink . FRIEND What? The mayor of what? What year? WILLIE Tell me, my friend, have you given thought as to how to vanish into language and pure promise, here in Magic City, here in the promised land? FRIEND Why, yes, as a matter of fact I have. You are far from a girlfriend. WILLIE (Next scene.) Three. Something broken in the dance plans. EUFALA He was going to be here. I think he was going to be here. We were going to meet him here. Day after Memorial Day, and baby at him. Already forgetting. What will that be? SANDMAN What will that be? What will that turn into, do you think? An inappropriate simile. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 17
EUFALA Something Breaking down By lining up It is 7:30 (Crowds begin to confuse the muddy streets.) SANDMAN Undressed day has left its clothes out of the drawers, everyone’s demon is in motion. Ten thousand things become ten thousand other things. A brief hallucination of dominoes enters the weather. Insides are going daring early, and outside is darker than that. Thick as glue, meaning without respite. EUFALA He was supposed to be here. We were going to – SANDMAN (Next.) Four. WILLIE (Down to two friends; they’re peeling off.) People seem to be – where did you – He left? He’ll catch up. He’s good to catch up, you know him, let’s go. FRIEND Strangely dark. WILLIE What makes it strange? I mean, it’s night. FRIEND Well – busy for the amount of night it is. WILLIE Shadows humming light like light’s a tune they don’t remember. Crepuscule. SANDMAN Poe memorized for school. EUFALA Willie, wake up. There is no school dance. Shadows are falling, one against the other. WILLIE (Down to one friend.) Patience, my friend. Where did he – It’s just you and me then. All the more for – (Looking.) Diamond Dick 6/21/11 18
We two we can – SANDMAN The flow of people to the jailhouse where up a winding stair Diamond Dick protected as a maid in a fairy tale. Hear the phone call. “If I need help I’ll…”or, “I need help…” or, “Come on, boys, let’s go.” WILLIE To the theater. My folks. SANDMAN In Kinyarwanda, the word “enemy” means “the one who hates me.” There had been a jailbreak in county just yesterday – smuggled files and bed sheets – JOHN The wretched porousness of the jailhouse. We had emergencies at that time in luxurious superfluity of cliché. WILLIE Where are – Stay close. SANDMAN Massing at the jail and the tracks. MAN Hand over that nigger. SHERRIFF Now I can’t do that. WILLIE This way – My mother and father Own the Dreamland EUFALA Seeing the men – SANDMAN Five: He turns himself into a movie theater. EUFALA He peels off his shirt and it sticks to the blood and ink of a new tattoo. Dreamland Marquee. SANDMAN Popular janitor I mean junior. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 19
EUFALA He drinks a glass of light, and vomits it up as newsreel carnations. SANDMAN He goes to see his parents at the playhouse. FRIEND Then home, we home, and what prom do you use for God, for Christ, what pronoun, music? WILLIE Carbon to diamond and mines full of silver. Mind as I like it and night, refined. And we thigh‐ed ourselves into night for hiding and for godlike birth. Night flattered the pages of the book of the heart so words opened, spine croaked back… and: the pages burn in blame, shadowfire; rapes shine from silver, robs me of my wealth and literacy to purchase forgetting. You project me as light and turn out the light; you write me till the type blots, tear out the article and burn it in your fingers, take the mineral of the film and let it run gutters, burying us without funeral in several boxes. This was my night. EUFALA He’s a teen‐hearter, remember. SANDMAN A squall of rain. EUFALA Willie goes to the Dreamland to see our mother and father. They always have something smart to say. Like go to your safety, my daughter, my daughter! Willie! LOULA It’s not only the dying, the running, and the blotting confusion of the night. The killing. It is the innermost not‐having. Your tongue pulled out. Your heart the next meat muscle to replace it, and your heart broken. A cold, flowerless north of saying. Nothing to stay. Swollen jaw, lips tight shut. Pain. EUFALA Where did you –? Dreamland. Just right there. Right there down Greenwood. SANDMAN Six: A little house inside a pile of shit. EUFALA (To Dick, in the jailhouse, delivering him her bowl of fruit.) Movie paints over movie. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 20
LOULA They were not quite aware of what they were patterning themselves into. WILLIE (At the Dreamland Movie Theater.) Many men pressing to the door. I go in sideways and take the stairs, take the business stairs, takes the winding stair to the booth where Henry Snowden, the projectionist – HENRY Come in here. Come in here under the sound of the machine, huddle in the debris of projection. WILLIE Aw, Henry, I think the night is going to start. The last thing I wanted was for the night to start. Wished it could have stayed. SANDMAN Seven: And after this, the Royal. EUFALA A man sweeps it way. HENRY Black and white light flying thorough crystal. With the sound of falling silverware or guns or airplanes the film drags and spills, silver salts. We carry baskets of electricity like inflation money. WILLIE Watching The Brute with The Saddle King or one of a hundred other films with Hoot Gibson in it. EUFLALA The men come down the aisle two abreast. The theater is full, all theaters are full. One man bounds to the stage, shapes his head in the stream, swipes his hand through light and Henry puts the machine through careful shut‐down. MAN ON STAGE Close this place up. Shut the doors! SANDMAN Plane rises. The whites at around 500. Smitherman assembles another delegation at the Star – (A phone rings.) MAN ON STAGE Diamond Dick 6/21/11 21
They say they want our help are we going to help they say if they need help they need – They need our help. HENRY Come with me, son. WILLIE I to the what? Another. Mother and father to the north, sister to the west. Henry takes me east to his own home. WILLIE, EUFALA Getting dressed Night shifts Peel away Dreamland Side stair Movie swiped Towers fall Dreamland EUFLALA Eight: I’m the little sister playing someone’s little sister in a play. SANDMAN She is raped. EUFLALA (Her line of dialogue from the play.) I picked these. These many things. They’re for you. They’re for all of us. WILLIE Strawberries in a cut in half gourd, heart high, luxury of cliché, holding out papier mâché berries to a boy in a cotton beard. WILLIE, EUFALA The human body. The human body. The legs, the hips, the fingers, the head, The knees, the ankles, the tooth, the thumb, the eyes, the throat, the nape. Date, orange, quince, fig, beef, water, music, coffee, beer. Cigar. Cigarette. Pipe. Tobacco. Newspaper. Match. Light. (Euflala is raped in firelight, she is the fireling.) EUFLALA (To Willie.) The movie projector is a sewing machine sewing your eyes shut. I was on my way to a dream. Night sweeps me away. Red bird, Goodbye! Diamond Dick 6/21/11 22
(A phone rings and rings and rings and rings. The play.) The human body The human body – The body The trunk The skeleton The bone The limbs The human body The human body The hair The skull The eye The lip The human body The jaw The tongue The beard The neck The throat The nape Breast Chest Abdomen Back Shoulder Heart Lungs Stomach The rib The liver The mind Eye‐lash Eye‐brow Spectacles The blind men The human body The table is laid! Serviette Table‐spoon Knife Diamond Dick 6/21/11 23
Soup‐tureen Sauce‐boat Mustard‐pot The wine‐bottle Beer The coffee Chocolate The human body: After the meal – Sugar‐tongs The cigar The ash The cigarette The pipe The newspaper The match Light WILLIE When the riot come I was at the school getting ready for the prom. A lot of black men were up there, even the white guy who ran the movie projector at the Dreamland for my dad. ANDREW After reading the stories in the afternoon's Tribune, Willie Williams, a popular junior at Booker T. Washington High School, hurries over to his family's flagship business, the Dreamland Theater, at 127 North Greenwood. “We're not going to let this happen,” declares a man who has leapt onto the theater's stage, “We're going to go downtown and stop this lynching. Close this place down.” Rialto Theater: Someone ran in shouting “Nigger fight, nigger fight.” JOHN Black Tulsans were having their play at the Dixie Theater. BINKLEY WRIGHT But after the play had been on only ten minutes, the [house lights came up]. The manager asked us all to leave. No explanation was given. Outside, we heard and saw all kind of confusion – people running, people upset, people talking about a “race riot” being on. We boys didn't know what a race riot was. So we each caught a jitney and rode back into North Tulsa on a spare tire. WILLIE Sister throbs like a forgotten record hopefully safe in the school play at the Dixie. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 24
SANDMAN At the Royal Theater – LOULA The movie that night was “One Man in a Million.” 1 (A stage version plays.) CHOC PHILLIPS The mob action was set off when several men chased a Negro man down the alley in back of the theater and out onto Fourth Street. Seeing the side door open the Negro rushed in and hurried forward in the darkness hunting a place to hide. Suddenly he was on the stage in front of the picture screen and blinded by the bright flickering light coming down from the operator's booth in the balcony. After shielding his eyes for a moment he regained his vision enough to locate the steps leading down to the audience, just as his pursuers raced in through the front doors. One of them saw the Negro and yelled, “There he is, heading for the aisle.” As he finished the sentence, a roaring blast from a shotgun dropped the Negro man by the end of the orchestra pit. WILLIE You’re falling? What are you falling through? The light. What is the light falling through? The night, the blood, is script, is a movie, is vaudeville debris. Stop the projector. HENRY No let me – if you stop it the bulb burns right through. (Willie takes off his suit. Eufala lays it out again.) EUFALA This is for you for tonight. A small flower. (She climbs inside his suit.) WILLIE (See his sister as she was right after the rape.) Blue and staring, my sister, laid out with the clothes she says I should, or should have. 1 “Lupine Delchini is fired from his job at the lunch counter when he gives food to a penniless man. Before he leaves, he gives the man part of his salary too, not realizing that he is a secret service man in disguise. Because of this kindness, the man makes sure that Delchini is hired as the head of the local dog pound, where he can express his love for animals. One day a little boy and a dog show up at the pound, and Delchini adopts them both. The boy, it turns out, is a Belgian refugee, and the secret service man finds his mother. Delchini proposes to her and because he loves her little boy so much, she accepts, even though she is in love with the secret service man. Eventually Delchini discovers this, and he is sad at the thought of losing the boy. But then it is discovered that the boy actually changed identification cards with another tot, who is really the woman's son. Delchini is allowed to keep the boy, and he realizes he loves his patient secretary, Flora Valenzi .” Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide Diamond Dick 6/21/11 25
EUFALA He is – dead by now. In memorial. He is dead by now but not by then. Day of the prom, legs below him, he dressed, he addressed – he marked himself as paper on the day when the air was fire. Is the world a fire? No, but we better run. WILLIE (Back now at the start of prom night, carefree.) Gentlemen, you ready? EUFLALA In advance of dancing they stood, pallbearers at the coffin of their manly initiative, and like at a funeral, could sometimes not stop laughing. They are dropping natal, they are roaming; spilling celluloid in surplus swags on the unvarnished floor. They are unready and at time. WILLIE Gentlemen, we – FRIEND They’re isn’t a dance tonight. WILLIE There will be. FRIEND No. WILLIE You can’t get out of it that easy, I’m going to stand there and wait for you to – FRIEND No, they’re going to laugh that – lynch the boy for that one time with the girl. EUFALA Wear the flower if you’re going to stand there like a dead man, might as well bring your own flower. LOULA They have Diamond Dick for Sarah. Orphan to orphan like ink to page. EUFALA I looked like light expanding in clear water. MARY She is tried in a ring of red. When she heals and is back to church going, instead of money she writes a note to Christ. She keeps it in a tiny reticule ready for Sunday and puts it in an envelope for the basket. Tells the priest her story in a letter, Diamond Dick 6/21/11 26
Sundays away. This letter is burned and she burns to ash, as does everything ever said. She burns in a ringared. ii)
Riot SANDMAN 12:30 a.m. After an attack by blacks, whites, at Second and Cincinnati, by the Frisco station mistake a lone white man for a Negro, and fire off so many rounds, his body is mangled almost past identification. 1:00 a.m. First fires set by whites at Archer and Boston. White rioters force the firemen away at gunpoint. (A 70‐year‐old black woman hides under her house. She grows wings of flame, and hair of flame. She flies and bumps dangerously in the confined space.) 2:00 a.m. Fighting along the Frisco yards ends. ANDREW Nine p.m. the trouble started, two a.m. the thing is done. SANDMAN One elderly African‐American couple is shot in the back of the head by whites as they kneel in prayer inside their home. More than 24 black businesses have burned to the ground. MARY A flight of stairs tries to climb a pair of shoes. OFFICER (Counting the bodies.) 1, 2, 3… MARY I took my little girl, Florence Mary, by the hand and fled out of the west door on Greenwood. I did not take time to get a hat for myself or Baby, but started out north on Greenwood, running amidst showers of bullets from the machine gun located in the granary and from men who were quickly surrounding our district. Seeing that they were fighting at a disadvantage, our men had taken shelter in the buildings and in other places out of sight of the enemy. I felt that it was suicide to remain in the building, for it would surely be destroyed and death in the street was preferred, for we expected to be shot down at any moment. So we placed our trust in God, our Heavenly Father, who seeth and knoweth all things, and ran out of Greenwood in the Diamond Dick 6/21/11 27
hope of reaching a friend's home who lived over the Standpipe Hill in Greenwood Addition. FLORENCE It was just dawn; the machine guns were sweeping the valley with their murderous fire and my heart was filled with dread as we sped along.
Diamond Dick 6/21/11 28
E. Orchestra: June 1 MARY Tuesday night, May 31, was the riot, and Wednesday morning, by daybreak, was the invasion. i) National Guard/Coordinated assault/I will whistle and drum you TELEGRAM Tulsa, Okla., June l, 1921. Governor J.B.A. Robertson, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Race riot developed here. Several killed. Unable handle situation. Request that National Guard forces be sent by special train. Situation serious. SANDMAN 2:15 a.m. The governor authorizes the calling out of the state troops. (Ten thousand angels haunt the interior of a white sepulcher. Flour is laid in three crossed lines.) ANDREW Muster. In the pre‐dawn hours of June 1, armed whites gather in three main clusters along the northern fringes of downtown, opposite Greenwood. One group pulls up behind the Frisco freight depot; another waits nearby at the passenger platforms. Four blocks north, a third crowd comes together at Katy station. While it’s unclear how many are in each group, contemporary observers estimate the total number as high as five or ten thousand. SANDMAN 5:08 a.m. Dawn. (A drowning boy plays a flute.) MARY An unusual whistle or siren sounded, perhaps as a signal for the mass assault on Greenwood to begin. The machine gun in the grain elevator opened fire; crowds of armed whites poured across the Frisco tracks, headed straight for Black Wall Street. (The boy’s head is cut off. Tea is made in his skull.) ANDREW Some of the fires in Greenwood appear to have been set by whites wearing army khaki: World War I vets who put their old army uniforms when the riot broke out. MARY He just pours the tea right from his head. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 29
ANDREW A woman is taken. (A circle of white boys contemplates a bound black woman, boys drinking tea.) MARY There were boys in that bunch from about 10 years upward, all armed with guns. ii) Atrocities (A sudden outbreak of Porgy and Bess.) E.W. “GENE” MAXEY (Of the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department.) About 8 a.m. on the morning of June 1, 1921, I was downtown with a friend when they killed that good, old, colored man that was blind. He had amputated legs. His body was attached at the hips to a small wooden platform with wheels. One leg stub was longer than the other, and hung slightly over the edge of the platform, dragging along the street. He scooted his body around by shoving and pushing with his hands covered with baseball catcher mitts. He supported himself by selling pencils to passersby, or accepting their donations for his singing of songs. The streetcar tracks ran north and south on Main Street, and the tracks were laid on pretty rough bricks. The fellow that was driving the car I knew – an outlaw and a bootlegger. But I won't give his name because he has some folks here. There were two or three people with him. They got that old man, that had been here for years. He was helpless. He'd carry an old tin cup, sing, and mooch for money. One of them thuggy, white people had a new car, so he went to the depot, and came back up Main Street between First and Second. We were on the east side of the street. These white thugs had roped this colored man on the longer stump of his one leg, and were dragging him behind the car up Main Street. He was hollering. His head was being bashed in, bouncing on the steel rails and bricks. They went on all the speed that the car could make… a new car, with the top down, and 3 or 4 of them in it, dragging him behind the car in broad daylight on June 1, right through the center of town on Main Street. ROSYLYN NELSON I was about 12 when the riot came. Papa told me they drug my Uncle Willie behind a motor car until he was dead – with people laughing and clapping. House of lead. My mother then lives in a house of lead. And lead melts in fire. iii) Zion MARY He spoke she dropped the pitcher. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 30
ANDREW About fifty Negro men barricade themselves in the belfry of the newly‐built Mount Zion Baptist Church, whose view of the area just below Standpipe Hill offers temporary advantage to the resistance. Several massed attacks are made on the church by whites, but each time they are driven back… When the white rioters set up a machine gun – probably the same weapon used earlier that morning at the grain elevator – and unleash deadly force on the church belfry – the black defenders are quickly overwhelmed. MARY A short while later, Mount Zion is torched. (Shoes are burned in a pile.) iv) Airplanes (An angel pulls a fish from Christ’s side and eats it.) R.T. BRIDGEWATER (A black Tulsa physician.) Shortly after we left a whistle blew. The shots rang from a machine gun located on Standpipe Hill near my residence and aeroplanes began to fly over us, in some instances very low to the ground. J.B. STRADFORD (Hotelier.) The St. Clair Oil Company. I saw airplanes. At the time there were only two planes in Tulsa. One was owned by Harry Sinclair, the oil magnate, and the other was a government‐owned plane... MARY Off behind to the left in the sky a plane, milky, then night, a plane. I cannot sufficient turn for running, a plane or state of mind, the way metal trembles when sick, and shuddering flies off its back. From the sky a plane and from the plane a red tobacco, offering burning, burnt surreal; cinnabar. A crate of rags orange crate of rags, dynamite. Who owns a plane? ANDREW Sunoco owns a plane. MARY, EUFALA Firebomb makes a Ringared Ringared Ringared The black and white the read night flight Diamond Dick 6/21/11 31
You are good and wed. Once you’ve done, then you’ve said, Once and forever Ringared SANDMAN 4:30 a.m. a steam whistle – EUFALA Steam driven ice‐cream. SANDMAN Sounds three times. With the coming of daylight airplanes from the local aviation field, direct the movement of the oncoming army. MARY Your body, your politics, obediently purges. (Eufala is sick.) SANDMAN 6:15 a.m. ANDREW Men in planes drop fire‐bombs of turpentine or other flammable material on the property. One man, leaning far out from an airplane, is brought down by the bullet of a sharpshooter and his body bursts upon the ground. The man himself, an incendiary bomb. MARY, EUFALA (Praying.) My soul cries for revenge and prays for the day to come when I could personally avenge the wrongs which had been perpetuated against me. WILLIE AND HIS THREE FRIENDS Just Like The Movies. v) Is the whole world on fire?/Failure of the guard (Smitherman starts taking his clothes off and burning them.) TRIBUNE Hundreds of dwellings, scores of business, blocks and shops, several [blot], one public school and [blot] sheds and shacks were con‐[blot] in the fierce fire which Diamond Dick 6/21/11 32
raged [blot]out the colored district this [blot] sweeping a path of ruin and desolation 12 blocks wide and [blot] miles long between North Boston avenue and Madison avenue and [blot]‐ing from Archer street north to the open country. Damage which has not yet been [blot]‐timated by authorities but [blot]ceeds half a million [blot] at conservative [blot] caused by the flames. By 2 o'clock this afternoon the fire had [blot] down to scattered heaps of ruins, the main [blot] of this area and reaching the outer edge of the circle to the north and east of the city. MARY In the wake of the invasion comes a wall of flame, moving north. (Two boys, Kinney Booker and his friend, flee through firelight.) KINNEY’S FRIEND Is the whole world on fire? KINNEY I don't think so, but we are in deep trouble. (They are too light for the earth; they fly.) MARY So they keep on and they are carried to Convention Hall. A boy in a skirt because with a broken leg he can’t put his pants on, walking through concrete dust in the rain, his shoes growing heavier. When it was time for him to jump from the upper window he hesitated, then fell like a star. ANDREW Attempts by black Tulsans to defend their homes and property are undercut by the actions of both the Tulsa police and the local National Guard units, who, rather than focus on disarming and arresting the white rioters, take steps that lead to the eventual imprisonment of practically all of the city's African American citizens, in a handful of hastily set‐up internment centers, including Convention Hall, the fairgrounds, and McNulty baseball park. Six thousand imprisoned. (Smitherman puts a pot of water on the trash fire and sets it to boil.) MARY Symmetry asks symmetry for asymmetry Cancer asks youth for food Gravity asks a bird for wings – Then grows heavier for the added anatomy The past asks the future for the present A white dress asks for a bloodstain and changes her mind An angel loves to taunt death in a forest at the edge of hell Call love into time, it grows old and bent Distance, please Diamond Dick 6/21/11 33
Race war refugees SANDMAN An account of the riot, published a decade later, alleges that upon their arrival in Tulsa, the State Troops wasted valuable minutes by taking time to prepare and eat breakfast. CLARENCE FIELDS The government soldiers were good and bad. Many of the deputized vigilantes were wearing their World War I uniforms. I saw them shoot a boy who ran... I saw them rescue a black man from some whites intent on killing him. I was shot at from the air... and a bullet hit the wood and splinters hit me in the arm. We didn't talk much about the riot afterwards. They were still lynching black folks down south and nothing was done. Nobody wanted to stir up that trouble here anymore. We came to Oklahoma for freedom; many of us with the Indians on the Trail of Tears before the white man. Why do you think all those rich, white oilmen were members of the Klan, but married to Indians? They were stealing Indian's land. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 34
F. Burial ANDREW One day later, after spending the night at the home of a white projectionist who works at the Dreamland and who secures his release from Convention Hall, Bill Williams is reunited with his mother, father and sister. (The white deputies wash their ashes away. A black man covered in ash appears.) MARY Chimney stacks left standing. SANDMAN 11:29 a.m. June 1, the race riot has nearly run its course. Scattered bands of white rioters, some of whom had been awake for more than twenty‐four hours straight, continue to loot and burn, but most have already gone home. GRAY NEGRO (Receiving emergency rations. To the potatoes.) Thank you, potatoes. Hello. Let’s go. SANDMAN 8:00 p.m. June 1, order restored. The Tulsa race riot is over. TRIBUNE With martial law in force, forbidding the indiscriminate use of the streets to vehicles and pedestrians until 8 o'clock Thursday morning; with 5,000 Negro refugees confined in the buildings at the county fair grounds east of the city; with ‘Little Africa’ in ashes, and with Adjutant General Charles F. Barrett in command of seven companies of National Guardsmen, Tulsa is comparatively quiet after a night and part of a day of race rioting. ANDREW North Greenwood Avenue, the principal thoroughfare of the colored district, resembles the ruins of a town hit simultaneously by fire and tornado. (The Gray Negro falls dead.) WILLIE Most of the blacks who were killed met death in the early morning fighting in the Negro section near the Frisco tracks. (Eufala gathers the scattered potatoes, puts them in the pot of boiling water.) ANDREW The bodies are apparently not handled in a systematic manner; they’re loaded into trucks by people in plain clothes. Kirkpatrick says he does not know where they are Diamond Dick 6/21/11 35
taken – whether they are placed at some specific point for later attention, if they are dumped into a large hole, or thrown into the Arkansas River. LOULA No coffins are used; funerals are banned. The bodies are cast into holes and covered with clay. KINNEY (Older.) I talked to the sexton at Oaklawn Cemetery. He said truckloads were brought in and they were buried in the pauper field in the southwest corner... I saw two truckloads of bodies. They were Negroes with their legs and arms sticking out through the slats. On the very top was a little boy just about my age, he looked liked he had been scared to death. LOULA If a bell were rung every thirty seconds for the dead in memorial, you don’t know when it would start of stop, or how many times. They are buried in freight boxes, they are buried scattered around. WILLIE Highways cut the skeleton of the town in the town apart. It cannot zombie itself together. (It rains copper leaf, which burns green.) ANDREW Despite the efforts of the American Red Cross, thousands of black Tulsans are forced to spend the winter of 1921‐22 living in tents. JOHN We are issued ‐ green identity cards. MARY The old woman is as wrinkled as an empty sleeve; she stands in the ash of the breakfast nook. It’s Thursday; she wants Sunday. “Paula, Seth, Howard? Pawn? Pawn? Pawnbroker?” She means to be calling for her family but lands in the name of the pawnbroker; the pawnbroker is dead and her family is dead and the broken house is a theater desacralized because the town is dead; it’s Thursday because the calendar is broke and in that theater they were wrestling at night on the backs of live chickens, breaking them. JOHN The refugees are lined up and given bread; the men are separated from the women and children. Diamond Dick 6/21/11 36
WILLIE Hundreds of blacks are seen leaving Tulsa along the roads to other towns: Broken Arrow and Sapulpa. SANDMAN ALL TRAINS OUT OF CITY JAMMED WITH REFUGEES; HUNDREDS OF NEGROES BUY ONE WAY TICKETS OUT OF TULSA, AGENTS SAY. JOHN No white Tulsan is ever sent to prison for the murders and burnings of May 31, and June 1, 1921. One mile square, cold cinder. (The ghosts of bells.) Diamond Dick 6/21/11 37
G. St. Louis/Sarah+Dick years on (Sarah and Dick, in their thirties, a late‐night coffee shop in Kansas City.) SANDMAN Sarah Page refused to prosecute and Dick Rowland was exonerated. ANDREW 1,000 homes destroyed. SANDMAN The case against Dick Rowland is dismissed at the end of September, 1921. His dismissal follows the receipt of a letter by the county attorney from Sarah Page, the girl he was accused of assaulting, in which she states that she did not wish to pursue the case. According to Damie Rowland Ford, the accused rapist’s mother, once Mr. Rowland is exonerated of trying to rape Sarah Page, he immediately leaves Tulsa, and goes to Kansas City, where Sarah lives. SARAH I am an orphan. I am an orphan girl. DICK I have nothing to say. SARAH Somebody knows more than I do. Let them talk. Oooh I think I’ve had enough coffee. I think I’ve had enough sugar. Well, they will talk. Let them talk! I almost have something to say! I am an orphan girl DICK You are not. WILLIE Streets of Vinita. SANDMAN Stroking each other in the midnight river. Bodies uncounted. Nearly corpses, in their quiet. Coffee at night. Oceanic. SARAH Almost there. Oh, I’m so close. The End Diamond Dick 6/21/11 YERMEDEA RAW by Erik Ehn 1
YERMEDEA RAW 1/4/10 (1) (A Nurse gets ready for work, 3:30 a.m. Washes, dresses.) NURSE Make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth. In what person do I put God? Salvador, savior, Christ (Eye‐twitch coffee.) Saint in the poison in the coffee; dreams, all night; third watch. (Kisses the invisible. Leaves. Waits in a public place by an open drain. Material/people appear/disappear from/down the hole. The moon is bus; the driver is a woman. The bus comes to pick her up; this is the start of the route. The bus idles, waiting on its schedule. The driver gets out to keep the Nurse company.) The only people out at this hour are nurses and ghosts, and they can't help each other. This is where they fell. (She decides to pass the time telling stories.) One woman wanted to kill her children. One woman wanted children very badly. (A house is made out of light.) Before the nurse could steal the children from the first and deliver them to the second, the childless woman killed her husband. She was arrested. She hung herself in jail. (Medea appears; the Nurse and Driver see her, but Medea is in another world.) The babies are found. The first mother strangles them. MEDEA (The Woman.) Let the house fall. (It does.) NURSE Daylight is the fire of a wreck. (2) DRIVER (Starting a new version of the story.) Two women are Siamese twins joined at the war‐crime. The soldiers come for Medea's children, to the crowded dining table, to take them from their plates and raise them in a school for killers. But Medea has borne children. She is president of the flesh. Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 2
MEDEA Take your knives and cut, you will not cut them from me. DRIVER The troops give way. Yerma lives in a house made of corrugated paper. She makes clothes for Medea's babies. YERMA Embroidery a child dressed in white by the hand a glass of milk. DRIVER She loves the children as her own. Her husband won't give her any. YERMA With your shirt of frost. My dead of night dress. DRIVER Medea makes up a plan with her nurse. MEDEA (To Nurse, who is now a part of this story.) Take the kids to Yerma's house. Keep it a secret, until the army’s done looking. Stay with them. DRIVER The nurse takes the children through the woods. NURSE (Journeying; describing her anxious state of mind.) Did you ever hold a live bird in your hands? DRIVER The nurse can see – NURSE Yerma's house! DRIVER … From the hill. Yerma was born here. She is young. As young as Medea. She is beautiful. As beautiful as Medea. The soldiers are onto the switch. (Soldiers come around the mountains and enter the story.) NURSE (Trying to shield the children's ears, but she only has so many hands.) You’re too young for this. You’re too old. At midnight, they rape her, and burn her house. (They burn her paper house, her paper clothes, herself.) Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 3
SOLDIERS The ashes of your bedclothes are your bread and salt. NURSE Makes bread Of ash. Dries tears For salt. Her tears are as young As beautiful as Medea’s. DRIVER No children can come from the rape because the soldiers – YERMA Are all sterile. DRIVER The dirt the crops are in is sick, and the lakes for mouth and clothes are scummed with fallout from the diesel engines that power our second‐hand stars and moon and sun. Dengue flowers in Nestlé’s agar. Mountain piss runs out of broken pipes. Light can’t afford shadows and there’s nowhere for the wide sterility to hide. Nurse, you raise – NURSE I keep the children. I chew the arsenic out of berries, spit the poison to the drain and kiss the pulp that’s left back into their mouths. DRIVER Nourish them with mellow notes, birds no one has ever seen before. YERMA My child seems like a dove of light he is set free in my ear. MEDEA Her womb opens to birds when winter comes through pine trees NURSE Birds fly away. (The house of fire dies.) (3.) (A house made of thread.) Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 4
DRIVER Your story and my story are not the same. The house isn’t made of paper. It is made of fire. Soldiers come. Medea bars the door and smothers them in yellow blankets. (Medea smothers her children.) MEDEA A scent of apples these sheets hold yellow flowers. DRIVER What you do not know, or cannot admit is that their husbands were with the soldiers. Their husbands are military. Their husbands were there. MEDEA, YERMA Once there were two women. Medea and Yerma. MEDEA They sew clothes. YERMA This story survives embroidered on a fabric made of ghost gold. MEDEA Telling, hearing the story – MEDEA, YERMA We are with them. YERMA They are witches and make gold out of string. MEDEA But God is rich, and wants to stay that way. MEDEA, YERMA We – YERMA The gold dazzles other cares away. If we keep even a scrap of the yellow for our own purposes, God lets the devil into the metal. The weave leaks poison. MEDEA We labor in the witches' mill, turning out yards of textile worked up for – nothing. Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 5
YERMA Spooling our lives out for stitches, feeding our reserves of perseverance through the bobbins. We let our stories go. (The house of thread is unknotted.) (4.) (A house made of money.) NURSE Two poor women, both women are poor. MEDEA My babies are born very small. Born by c‐section against my will. They die in small plastic boxes. YERMA My babies are born not at all. Labor is induced prematurely and my tubes are tied. The company doctor tries to tell me I was never pregnant at all, that I had cancer. MEDEA They do not want mothers on the line. We labor but not for us, we labor but not for life. YERMA I'll end by believing that I’m my own child. MEDEA We steal the corpses back. They would otherwise be used for experiments, or plowed into landfill with the other medical waste. YERMA What you forget is we know the faces of all the doctors. MEDEA I'll bury them myself. NURSE They clothe the infants in suits and dresses of pure gold. Light off the clothes makes their wax cheeks look alive. Then the dead are spent for bread. YERMA Wake, work, eat bread and die. Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 6
MEDEA Thirst, swine, a little needle, a mouthful of water. (Children are replaced with bread; the money in the walls of the houses is spent.) (5.) DRIVER The houses are disguised as trees. YERMA We scatter bread on the water. Fish eat the bread and shit poison. The water is a witch. DRIVER She's been screaming lightning, father and city. MEDEA I wish I were a mountain of fire. YERMA Trees grow weak and fruit drops before the pickers come. Medea and Yerma glean the windfall. MEDEA, YERMA (Picking.) I wish I were a mountain of fire. DRIVER The river is in the fruit. The fruit are the ghosts of the children taken, or barred. MEDEA, YERMA Mountain of fire. (Medea and Yerma burn a pile of oranges.) YERMA What seems murder to you is our ownership. When we hold them safe, when we hold them at all, you cry as if we were murderers. MEDEA Take one child and I take it back. I bury it so it will grow into a child on fire. YERMA I bury a penny and it comes back as a thousand dollars because I am a witch. You cross me and the world is finished because the world is a witch and – Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 7
MEDEA, YERMA You go away you come back to me You go away you come back to me They go away they come back to me They go away they come back to me It goes away it comes back to me It goes away it comes back to me They go away they come back to me They go away they come back to me (6.) (A house made of Yerma and Medea.) NURSE Yermedea kills all her kids, the kids themselves, the fathers, her insides. Her children: Murmur and Rust. Balm. Wash. Fade Years of rape – trains full of laborers killing her in the wilderness. Boils her husband alive. He sat on a stool, watched, was paid during rapes. Soup grows colder the longer it boils. Snail crawls out of her womb. Chainsaw chrysanthemum – collapsed uterus; she was forced back to work too soon, carrying babies up, down the stairs. Escapes indenture, wanders to city. Picked up for vagrancy Cop, blood in the haircut, agrees to care for her. But he doesn’t love her. Hates her. Hates her children. Centaur. COP Toothless in front of a burning building when I found you I can arrest you for vagrancy. Get a woman with teeth you’re a guest of the city YERMA Brought me home, yes, to fuck. COP But that’s enough. NURSE Grabs his hand with the hand you’ve held (what person do I use?). Foreign language. Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 8
COP Careful. NURSE Doesn’t know what this means. Something breaks. She works making Christmas ornaments. Circular saws in ankle deep water. Exacts magic revenge: cuts silk balls open. The husband’s balls in disorder. New wife: Medea is a baker; bakes with starlight. Husband possessed by strange lusts: A hand up his own butt, squeezing kerosene out of his sperm, nighttime. Pees kerosene – Medea saves it. What’s left of his come is camphor. His love making during pregnancy is disordered, badly said, unwholesome Medea withholds children in her womb; they are dead in there. 20,000 dead children. MEDEA Rivers flows backwards. My life is changing— Don’t think I'm useless Children, come out—Your life is changing. I wish you happiness—but somewhere else. My own hands will bury them. NURSE Ghost child army work with the lady arsonists. The children are the vehicle. Become the sound of bells. Bat eats its way out of his head, a bird no one has ever seen before. Clowns in the city trees – small, thin, muscular, large‐eyed, hungry and hateful. Teeth for tearing. These are Medea’s bears. Husband goes mad and dances with Medea’s bears, falls in love with a bear, who eats him. Medea is sterilized against her will by the town council. Medea and Yerma eat fried sardines and sing sad songs on an island in the sea. MEDEA Blood is a bag of coins on the historian’s floor. He will pick the coins up – take them from you – then write what he wants to anyway. YERMA A story they tell: Mary becomes a giant when God says yes to her. Mary gives birth to a full‐sized dead man. Christ as a baby and crucified are the same thing. Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 9
MARY (A third sister on the island.) And it was illegal And I was alone MEDEA Yerma puts a seed in her collapsed uterus. A tree flowering out of her vagina kills her Pests won't eat her body, nor fire bite her heart (Medea and Yerma disappear.) (7.) NURSE Am I missing anything? Something I need to move? DRIVER Three minutes. NURSE Not yet. I am not missing anything yet. DRIVER Two minutes. NURSE Although I will. Miss it. What minute frees me? Frees me from what? The job of remembering this. I have given myself a deadline for forgetting. I am occupied with this. If I fail to forget, then I will be missing something. Did you ever hold a ghost‐pulse in your hand, a sweet heart beating in the invisible fruit of the fire tree, the trees that have shot up through all this damage? Ah, ah, ah, where has life gone? DRIVER Less “ah,” more soul. Pray at the hole NURSE (Praying, singing at the hole.) Take my tiredness for prayer My frankness for truth I murder my words, my memory, and leave ashes of flowers at your grave Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 10
DRIVER Time to go. (She walks up into the sky and hangs onto the gill of the moon. A generator shuts down and the stars go out; the Nurse rides into the starless night.) You know a lot more than you – (She stops him with a gesture.) NURSE But I don't like to say. (Medea and Yerma appear, faces in the branches.) MEDEA The moon takes the last hairpin curve in the deepness – NURSE And on crashes day. The End Yermedea Raw 1/4/10 HEAVENLY SHADES OF NIGHT ARE FALLING by Erik Ehn 1
Prologue L’ASH Reunion with voice. There you are. There you are. Where were you? Where were you? Voice. My voice. You set the table with invisible hand. You arrower. You heart. Voice has come home inside your face again, singer. The universe is a spiral inner ear, and love is a quiet, perceptible, immortally muscled pulse. CELINA L’ash and the Nuns and the widows of the world climb the long boats over green wave walls. L’ASH What rolls down from the high places? What tumbles, tombée? L’ASH, NUNS (A rowing song.) Heavenly shades of night are falling L’ASH Backing into successive arcs I see the hair of death’s dreaming flow. Death, I cannot guess what you mean. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 2
A: Lady’s Man One CELINA L’ash rides a bike to her daddy’s house. L’ASH Daddy, daddy, come out to play. Daddy, daddy you can’t sing. Sing anyway! (It rains. L’ash walks.) Oklahoma. Don’t they have cowboys out there? Isn’t that where West was till I came north? Minnesota is a screen, a lacquered screen fire blue cloudless sky, where I forget to – (Robert Carl appears, insubstantial as smoke.) ROBERT CARL Are you ready? L’ASH Where did you come from? ROBERT CARL Dead. L’ASH Don’t play with strangers. ROBERT CARL Let me in your coat, woman, it’s raining. L’ASH No. That’s it. I’m done. ROBERT CARL I don’t know everything. I know one thing. I know where you can find out about your father. L’ASH You’re making this up. ROBERT CARL Then why are you crying? L’ASH Ghost makes me cry. (Robert Carl hold’s L’ash. In time, she holds too.) Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 3
It is so cold. And I am embracing a wisp of smoke, crying. (Wanting out.) Slant offa me. ROBERT CARL Hold me. L’ASH Can’t see. Can’t breathe. ROBERT CARL Find my son. His name is Renno. I’m Robert Carl. L’ASH Why can’t you find him? ROBERT CARL Because all I can do is look at you. L’ASH Bullshit. ROBERT CARL All I can look at is you. L’ASH Haven’t told me how you know. ROBERT CARL I killed him. Your father. (She tries to pull away.) Hold on. Hold on. L’ASH You’re drunk. ROBERT CARL We’re all a little drunk, here. L’ASH I’m letting you go. ROBERT CARL I killed your father. I hove back an edge of metal I sharpened on the asphalt and oiled to a shine with fat rendered from the dogs. I killed him across the head. I took him down to clay. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 4
L’ASH What does your son know? ROBERT CARL Find him for me. L’ASH What does he – ROBERT CARL That’s my secret. L’ASH You don’t know. ROBERT CARL No. I don’t. My son is alive, but my eyes are on you. Find out what he knows. Tell me what he knows and then this heat can finish me. I’m still in the oven. My alcohol is my blood cooking. L’ASH Why me? ROBERT CARL I know less, the more I say. He’ll tell you. L’ASH Where is he? ROBERT CARL I don’t know. I haven’t turned my head from you to look elsewhere, even once. Find him and tell me. L’ASH But you’re going away. ROBERT CARL I’ll come back. L’ASH When? ROBERT CARL You ask too many questions. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 5
Two L’ASH My father is a handsome man. My father was a handsome man. My father has white hair. My father never lived to have white hair. My father paid women compliments. My father paid women. When my father drank, he lost ability to keep compliments apart from insults, where sober he could by means of intimation and subtle lady’s man postures. My father is Oklahoman. Oklahoma is a territory. Was. May be defined many ways and never in one fixed way. FATHER Siloab o dot do the reticule banjo on a tympani lip, sugar. Reticule o Siloab with the breast flowing in the wedge of sun. L’ASH He speaks in an invented hybrid of Latin and Gypsy that works because he plays drums. Him being dead is snow melting between my breasts. Not even God can take the pain away. Nightly the earth eclipses herself and all measure falls unreadable under shadow. The state is a spirit loom and the mind of the dove threads wind through, weaving Dad a snappy, red suit. He plays the after‐hour clubs. Man, expand: get your elbows out, take the bandstand. Get in. Pound skin. (A Woman in a car watches Father from a distance.) On an outland hill a woman idles in her car 2:30 a.m. under a moon as sharp and private as a gunshot wound in night’s shoulder. FATHER Holy Ghost, give me children Excuse me, my state of sin. War over, boom in Holy Ghost, give me children (Father and the Woman lie down and make love. The Holy Ghost comes upon the Woman.) WOMAN Radio, will you save me? Or are you echo in love with my misery? Spirit moves into my body. I say, o all right. L’ASH He has many children by his wife and he has many children by besides. But the women have no part in us. He prays hard. Special pine‐smoke ritual. (He rolls away from the woman; makes a small fire with pine resin and breathes the smoke.) Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 6
FATHER Pine, I am old Older than I thought Between the mighty thumb and forefinger of God Pine, I am caught L’ASH With his personal array of luxuries and the skill of his playing he charms the third part of God. He inhales potency with the ceremony smoke. In Greenwood up by Pine His kiss transfers heat and the woman conceives a child though she is barren. He has a child here and there. We don’t take milk directly from the mothers because we have no umbilicals or mother’s blood. We do not recognize our mothers’ breasts. So Daddy takes the milk in his mouth and squirts through our lips; we take it with his flavors of tobacco and peach brandy. We babes in the cradle purse our lips to kiss brandy milk from father’s mouth. Mothers drop out of stories we tell about ourselves as early as five years old. Why no mothers in the babies’ blood? Love is particular and Daddy beats the women to the prayer every time. L’ASH, FATHER, CELINA Suit of red Suit of red I have gone through the fire Holy Ghost gives me many children Nobody but me knows the difference Between the fire I’ve crossed And the fire I’m in. L’ASH When his women sleep, water shivers over their faces. Daddy watches them. He can put his hands deep into the well of their dreaming. He can reach down and cup up the child wanting to be born. The waiting child opens her eyes in the gem of gathered water and looks into Daddy’s eyes. On nights when the candlelight fills the scene with wealth and he is overcome with love, Daddy tilts his head back and pours the baby (me, for example, baby girl) down into the gray cistern of his right eye. He carries babies, seahorse‐secret, for days at a time, before pouring them back into the dreams of wife and other women. I was in him before I was born. Daddy had ten children we know, and others unclaimed. They are echoes making their reverberant appeal. What is the wall between me and the dead, and where is the door, and how did the smoke get through? “Baby?” Baby. Baby. Head bends to mine Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 7
Fatherly Fatherly Fatherly Far from me. CELINA Our father’s mouth is at your forehead, chrism of heat. L’ASH I fell in love on an Ash Wednesday and wear char cross on my head. I will be here forever, in Fatherly. MOTHER Why do you look for your dead father? Why don’t you look for me? L’ASH I’m not sure you’re the one. MOTHER You were raised in my house. L’ASH Not so I remember. MOTHER I gave birth to you. L’ASH Well, of course I don’t remember. MOTHER You don’t remember my face or my attentions? L’ASH I don’t remember any of it. MOTHER When I say, “I love you,” the sound of that doesn’t come back? L’ASH Love is particular. I don’t have time for this general adoration. He knew me before I was born. I compare my lips to his. I will touch my lips and I touch his. FATHER I hold you in my hands in the water of dreams, gold in the candlelight, breathe upon the water of the dream. My pregnant hands care for you and spill not a drop. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 8
L’ASH Night and day in passion Hold together here, my dear I hear you, my darling At twilight time. FATHER (Touches his chest.) Infidel. L’ASH Smoke follows me. All ghosts: one ghost; strands of the one same smoke. The destiny of any energy is a rising. All fire rises to starlight as smoke. My father has Become astronomy And I am sailor on The wide, walled sea FATHER Coffee. Is that good? L’ASH Yes, sir, Hot. FATHER Drink it with milk. Milk is good for you. L’ASH Yes, sir. Bitter. FATHER Eat a bite of chocolate right after. Chocolate’s good for you. L’ASH Yes sir. Everything is fine. FATHER You know what a tomcat is, don’t you? L’ASH Yeah. FATHER Tomcat stays out all night. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 9
L’ASH You’re not a tomcat. FATHER Home before morning. I come home late like this sometimes because I’m part tomcat. L’ASH How can you be part anything? FATHER Sometimes I tomcat. Sometimes I’m slow. Sometimes I am beset. Hands come out of the night, L’ash. Have you ever been touched by a hand that comes out of the night? I pray you haven’t. I can’t move like I used to. I want you to be very careful. L’ASH Of hands. FATHER Of not being able to move like you used to. L’ASH I stay awake so late comparing lips, living in the brilliant burn in my mouth that I uncover new parts of the night unexplored by any prior human. I am Leif Erickson in a coffee boat and I will never sleep again. His music is slower His lips are soft to the touch His hands are empty I love him, this much Empty hand love. Swollen knuckle love. Unspecified quantity love – you‐take‐your‐
choice love. Going‐away love. Final day love. Beset love. Spit tooth love. I compare lips, I smell peach. I shall perish! How much love? This much love. A rehearsal of death. FATHER Fatherly Fatherly Fatherly L’ASH Just Like The mo‐ Vies Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 10
B: Riots One (Late afternoon.) MOTHER They practice killing on pets. Sharpness. Recoil. Rate of flow. The weather changes. Coughing like Chopin Working like Cain The burned root Disorganized rain A day too late A Cain too cursed Pray to the Ghost Expect the worst By thorn, by pain are you made ready, By terror are you set free. By touch of the hand, abandoned. L’ASH Rain is falling, falling. The rain writes vertical Chinese with a billion improvised brushstrokes, as if you could make up Chinese. Spring will be over by spring this year. Something is coming too early this year. Something is coming forever. 1921 and 31 and 41 and 51 and 61 and 71 and 81 and 91… (L’ash comes upon Celina torturing a passive Annabella. Still raining.) L’ASH Celina, what are you doing? CELINA Stretching Annabella on the rack. L’ASH What’re you using? CELINA Mama’s stockings. L’ASH Going around the piano legs and the sofa? You got her good. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 11
CELINA She won’t let me tie around her neck, though. I can’t make her taller if she won’t let me get her around the neck. L’ASH Arms, though. Legs. CELINA Yeah. They’ll stretch. L’ASH Yeah, well, listen. Can I ask you a favor? CELINA What? L’ASH (Smack.) Untie her. ANNABELLA I want her to do it. L’ASH Both of you. Let her untie you. We have to go get Daddy. CELINA It’s raining. RENNO On the sea. It is raining on the sea. L’ASH We have to go. (They arrive at a bar. L’ash enters. Celina and Annabella wait at the door.) L’ASH The bar daddy likes to get drunk in carefully is still part Cowboy and Indian. It is so illegal it is peaceful. Milk‐thick Choctaw hemp. Get up, Dad Get up out of the stink Is this the way it’s going to be? Is this the way it’s going to be forever? FATHER Yes, this is the way it’s going to be Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 12
This is the way it’s going to be forever. (He exits the bar and walks the road, daughters following. Twilight.) L’ASH There’s rain and somebody left the universal flue unset. Streets look like Venice turned upside down. We have company tonight. CELINA You’re full to here of me. L’ASH Come under the jacket. ANNABELLA Full up to here of the nine of us. L’ASH There enough of you that I can forget how many there are at one time. That makes it easier. CELINA I know that father held us in his hands before we were born. L’ASH You do? CELINA Yes, I remember the drumstick calluses. The taste of the ashwood stain. L’ASH Yes. CELINA I’m a good rememberer, L’ash. I appeared as light then, when he dipped my mamma’s head, and was thirsty, but didn’t drink. L’ASH That was the case. Yes. CELINA I believe that over his shoulder, many lights shone. That when he trembled me, his face above, the many lights of us were together once, before I was born. L’ASH I believe that too, Celina. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 13
CELINA That bar was quiet, L’ash. L’ASH Yes. CELINA It’s getting dark, L’ash. L’ASH Yes. ANNABELLA The light’s gone from the fancy room. NUN ONE Shooting the dogs so they won’t eat the dead Eating the dogs Free yeast. Ice eucharist Two (Father enters the fancy room. Girls spy outside. Some spy; L’ash doesn’t.) L’ASH It’s a room. In our house. CELINA Think I don’t know that? L’ASH The way you’re creeping like it’s a den of vice, yeah. ANNABELLA Wanna see? L’ASH I’m the oldest. Can’t afford to be literal. ANNABELLA I’m not literal. CELINA She is. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 14
ANNABELLA You are. L’ASH You all are. CELINA I’m not literal. You take that back. L’ASH They heard you. They’re coming out. (Pause.) No. We’re all right. (L’ash looks.) ANNABELLA What do you see? L’ASH Nobody eating. Women with no hats or wigs. All sitting. Dad too weak to stand. If heads were notes this is one held chord, close harmony. ANNABELLA Why’s it so loud? L’ASH She’s got the Wagner on. That’s no joke. RENNO The opera comes to them over voices, through curtains, windows, rain. (Sudden Wagner. Mother turns the record player up to avoid being overheard.) OPERA Death is round you No one is dying No one is dying But there is death Flight is mercy Some kind of mercy Clouds are low And no birds fly Christ is a liar Buddha is a liar Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 15
Water is fire Death is everywhere CELINA What do the grown ups talk about so liplessly? L’ASH That is a mystery. That’s it! That’s what they are doing. They are suffering. (Music, out.) MOTHER A boy falls against a white woman in an elevator. Up there, as if in the air, the building gone away. All our novels, down to the size of punchlines. Three (Company clears out. L’ash alone with her Mother.) MOTHER (Prays.) Marylord I build your roses behind my bones. Marylord love us into the house of God’s hearing. Mary may we die living. Marylord I trust you still, a little bit yet. Mary, don’t you forget it. L’ASH (Describing rioters.) They make small smithy ovens, burning ironwood staves in cinderblock holes and shoving scrap metal into the stuffed, glowing pockets. They withdraw scrap and pound it. MOTHER I twist bone roses to crown Marylord I make your May Dying will be no new thing. Mary I die daily. Save us by the second Have us on your hour Every child knows An hour is forever Far away L’ASH He, the white Father, tells us to meet in the church at an appointed hour, and drives up an hour later in an open car, standing in the back seat with a man with a two foot long spike tucked behind his leg. At a signal, a good bit of the killing is done. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 16
Four L’ASH Daddy you can’t sing. Sing anyway. FATHER Hide here, here. (Chaotic energy. Father tries to hide and protect his children. Eight Mason jars, each with a small child inside.) L’ASH A child pinched in fingers he hides us, drop at a time. He is a giant and the bottles in which he slows his brewed peaches are large. He hides drop at a time his children in peach liquor jars, starting with next to youngest and ending with next to oldest. Seals them with prayer and wax and puts them into the Arkansas, up from the rain. By this means his offspring are preserved. CELINA Daddy you holding me, a drop between your fingers? L’ASH Drink up. Wipe the jar with your shirttail. Soften the tallow in a pail on a rock in a fire that turns to a dream that turns to the flames of the burning book of the ocean. Seal the jars. ANNABELLA Is it Christmas, yet? FATHER Christmas over. I do not give you as presents and you will not soon be opened. ANNABELLA The jars are glass and the river is glass. Are we glass? FATHER No, You are my child. Flap of wave, dog‐ear of many‐paged almanac waters. Go. (The children float away over the sea. Father and L’ash watch from separate shores.) L’ASH Wish You Were My Baby! Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 17
My baby ANNABELLA Where’s L’ash? CELINA She’s the oldest. Bigger than a drop. (A man with a rusty sword comes up behind L’ash, she runs.) L’ASH The drop of the spoon in the spark of the lark The hung of the moon in the crook of the dark Extreme unction Particle and wave function Love comes apart In waves RENNO They commandeered a crop duster – they drop dynamite. The Dreamland – up in smoke. L’ASH (Slowing. The sky is in flames.) I burn at the equator And freeze at the pole The world is a nail And God is a hole When I die Don’t want no apology When I die God will have to Make this Up to me. CELINA Daddy. (Daddy crashes by, an infant in the crook of his arm.) L’ASH They come with staves and broken hoops. RENNO L’ash is the oldest, she will not fit in a bottle. She runs. She catches a shovel in the face and is left for dead. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 18
L’ASH You take the youngest with you. But she was born dead You, father, hide eight of ten in jelly jars Father, you elude capture and live on the planet Mars Ash Kiss (L’ash, stopped.) RENNO They catch L’ash running. Her face opens. They roll her roadside. MOTHER We wouldn’t shoo a dog from the church but now it lies down in a plan of . RENNO The church is gone. The priest is a stranger to himself, he wanders in cinderdrift. Lifts the girl from the ditch. Smudges his thumb in the everywhere ash. A minute into Wednesday gives her the mark of the cross. Her skin is so open that the X gets in and remains there through her life. L’ASH Father had converted to Catholicism to get into the better run of bars. Night sky Fuckin’ loco I’m always fallin’ Out of you RENNO A man flattened her face with the backside of a shovel. And she can’t hear her own voice in her head. She wears the expression of an advanced improviser. Her face focuses along a channel of concentration. But she hears it like it’s all just blowing. (The Priest takes L’ash to the train station and delivers her to the care of the Nun.) NUN ONE Come in under my wing RENNO Says the dark night air NUN ONE Come in under my wing Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 19
RENNO Says the Poor Clare L’ASH A nun wraps me up in the wing of her habit and spirits me onto the Minnesota train. RENNO They come out of the night with metal breath. They come out of the night at an angle. They have their hands on oiled metal. They leave charcoal fingerprints around their kitchens when the night is done. Her father’s body is found withered on macadam in front of the Dreamland. In his embrace, the body of his youngest, Delphine, born dead the night before, her body scavenged by dogs. CELINA The eight are at sea and the youngest and oldest are at either end of the riot. L’ASH (To Nun.) Where am I flying? NUN ONE To the orphanage. L’ASH (To Delphine.) I am flying to the orphanage. DELPHINE L’ash, L’ash. Where am I? RENNO An unpartnered mourning dove keeps pace with the slowing train. NUN ONE It’s morning. RENNO The dove breathes morning light on Lash’s beautiful face. L’ASH Are you kind? NUN ONE We talk. You never can tell if we are kind. We, like so… (Makes baking gestures, sewing gestures.) Same every day. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 20
RENNO The nuns run a home for orphans, quietly, in a brick building between brick buildings by the Mississippi in Minneapolis. NUN ONE Take a bite of roll. It’s long. RENNO The mother superior splits small rolls and they work their jaws in a palaver of chew. L’ASH On that night I do not go to church because Dad has raised me different. He pins six dollars to my shirt. Auntie takes my mother to the church. I do not go to the church, but that’s where many mothers die, clubbed with sharpness, then the fire. The last baby’s mother is dead of the bleeding from the bearing sooner than the sharpness falls. Dad is on the run having hidden his children. I am four when Tulsa falls. Five L’ASH What must be 700 years later, I walk out of a movie theater in Minnesota. I’ve had my bowl of chop suey by the night‐hardened windows. I am drunk on the manageable level I maintain with homemade chocolate liqueur, plus candy at the movie, scavenged from work. I was four when Tulsa fell. I’m walking out of a black and white movie, Shrove Tuesday, Minneapolis, ten years later. Smoke approaches. ROBERT CARL Seen you. L’ASH Trying to catch a bus. ROBERT CARL That bus is gone. L’ASH Who are you? ROBERT CARL I killed you father. L’ASH He ain’t dead. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 21
ROBERT CARL A sword made of the hoop around the iron wood stout barrels behind the Cowboy and Indian bar. We had planned for reckless fame. One night the curtains parted in the bordello of famous joy and closed purple behind us in a way that would let us, for this one fallen night, have our way. Murder’s a sin. Sin’s a whore. No one believes the testimony of whores. L’ASH Fuck sin, and be about your business. ROBERT CARL I took souvenir off him. L’ASH What did you get? ROBERT CARL Find my son for me. He has it. L’ASH You find your son. You bring – ROBERT CARL Find him. Make him pay my ransom. ROBERT CARL My eyes are on you alone. You’re all I’m allowed to see. I know he’s here, I don’t know where; he’s bound to be near you just like I am. I can tell you all you need to know to track him – (Robert Carl embraces L’ash. She finds the embrace hard to resist, at first.) L’ASH Let go of me, smoke. ROBERT CARL I don’t want to hold you, but you’re in front of me. I can tell you where he is… L’ASH Ghost. Let go. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 22
Six (Renno and L’ash.) CRESCENT Back to back – L’ASH I am not looking for you. CRESCENT Without turning. RENNO You are very beautiful. CRESCENT In the Twin Cities, in the winter, strangers in restaurants eat close. The killer’s son, Renno. L’ASH I’m eating my dinner here. RENNO The way you move and the way you sound out words you don’t know – you are very beautiful. You being conscious are hands and tears. CRESCENT Windchapped hands in low angle bare bulb light cast brontosaurus shadows. L’ASH Get your shadow offa my plate. RENNO Your whole being – L’ASH O stop. What’s your name? RENNO I’m afraid to tell you. L’ASH What a family. RENNO I’m afraid if I tell you that you’ll be over a line, and you’ll stop getting to know me. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 23
L’ASH Mr. Nameless Allure, your father’s looking for you and will no doubt come rising off some candle flame to invade you momentarily. What do you have to say? (Pause.) Turn around. Turn around. What do you have for me? RENNO What my father did, I… What he did I cannot… L’ASH Tell me. RENNO You don’t remember much about the early days. I don’t either but daddy kept track. He told me about your family, and before he died he told me you came up here. I been here ever since. L’ASH How much did he tell you? RENNO Your daddy was – CRESCENT And the history unfolds. The miracle births. The gathering at the church. The hidden eight, the broken‐hoop sword. (Meanwhile, Robert Carl versus Father again.) FATHER Why are you killing me? ROBERT CARL Because I have a sword. FATHER Why do you have a sword? ROBERT CARL Because I broke iron. FATHER Why break iron? ROBERT CARL Because I have fire: the cause and shape of iron. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 24
FATHER Why fire? ROBERT CARL Because it is cheap, and because it is mighty. I can make it out of trash. Because I can make it out of dried cowshit and cook grass soup with it. Because with it I am no savage. Because thus you are poorer than my poverty. Fire because I am in hell. L’ASH He didn’t die. RENNO I have these souvenirs. CRESCENT He gives her two leg bones. Her mind immediately makes them different. L’ASH His drumsticks. RENNO My daddy kept them safe. Gave them to me on his deathbed. L’ASH Where are my brothers and sisters? RENNO We’re in a movie, on screen, in a rush. We’re on the tarmac, we’re in the air. We’re in love. We’re a dotted line from here to Buenos Aires. L’ash, my love will you – L’ASH Where are – RENNO Holy smoke! CRESCENT Son and father, looking at L’ash at the same time, see through L’ash. See each other. Robert Carl steals his son away. L’ash is alone in a restaurant. End Act Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 25
C: The Search One L’ASH Minnesota is a screen, a lacquered screen, fire blue, cloudless sky, where I forget to – DELPHINE Are you ready? L’ASH Ready for what? DELPHINE You’re not, are you? L’ASH Who are you? Or won’t you tell me either? DELPHINE I’m your baby sister. I’m Delphine. You put your father’s bones or drumsticks from World War One under your mattress. Go to work. Carve the drumsticks into oars. Steal a boat and run away. L’ASH What’ll I tell them, the Clares, now that it’s time to leave? DELPHINE You’re not ready yet. L’ASH Since when has that mattered? (To her work.) Come out. Come out of the wood. (Nun One surprises her and L’ash hides her carving.) NUN ONE What’re you doing? L’ASH Making lunch. NUN ONE It’s dark out. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 26
L’ASH (Looking out the window.) Day coming on slow like a much older husband. NUN ONE Go to bed. L’ASH Sorry, sister. CRESCENT The Poor Clares think the sound is snoring. The sound is L’ash carves the oars with the tools the Clares use to make crucifix Christs: drawknife and chisel. Waxes the oars, seals them against the sea with beeswax from cloister hives. The Sisters wake up each morning, sullen, mistaking the chopping and sawing for snoring, each blaming the other for loss of sleep. They take to sleeping with their hands pinching each other’s nose. L’ASH (To her work.) Come out. Come out of the wood. CRESCENT Snowfall Rainfall Mindset: Split reed. (Nun One finds L’ash again.) L’ASH Sister, I want to die. NUN ONE You will. You will. L’ASH Sister, I mean I want to die trying. NUN ONE You are trying. And you will die. Meanwhile, where will you go? L’ASH Row the world. Will you come with me? You and the other Sisters? NUN ONE Yes. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 27
CRESCENT The day of the transoceanic trip. Nuns muster. They sneak into the marina. NUN ONE Bolt cutters. CRESCENT They liberate a boat. Evenly numbered, splitting the weight, they drive into the waves, swing themselves in, dark soaked skirts following, slap, like wet Labradors. L’ASH If you see a twilight, chase it. NUNS L’ash, lash the ocean L’ash, lash the sea Flying fish, good luck! Flying fish, good luck! CRESCENT Snowflakes fall Like the first three syllables Of busted to shit haikus Quiet lapse of Lost receipts, Each for a different amount. Who am I? DELPHINE You’re Crescent, sometimes called Senda. Two CRESCENT Hand over the side and dragging through the ocean’s liquid literature like a lover… She sleeps with the son of her father’s murderer, in her sleep. L’ASH Come out. Come out. RENNO You know as much as me. L’ASH I don’t. Come out of your mind. Come away to sea. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 28
RENNO I’m behind a cloud. You can’t even knock. CRESCENT Flying fish dash baby teeth out of the many mouths of the pronouncing sea. Flying fish, laughing, wake L’ash. Her hung fingers touch body parts. Two of L’ash’s dead siblings rise through the water, and submerge before L’ash can grab them. She reaches to touch the disembodied hand and the fingerprints sink. L’ASH Row. When you see twilight – CRESCENT They row as fast as they can to get through to the other side of the next twilight, but daylight follows, beating on them with terrible brightness. L’ash looks out for signs of her brothers and sisters, unindexed in randomly dog‐eared water. NUN ONE Her eyes are failing. Her mind is failing. Three L’ASH’S JOURNAL Day one. We steal the boat and push out. Day one. Crew morale holding, despite strict water rations. Day… one. Continue bravely. I could not ask for a heartier group of nuns. Day… one. Persuaded by Superior to see as flashing show the glamour of this world, but as I do not believe in Christ I marry myself. I decide I am in Paris and marrying up by marrying me. Day one. Losing my sight. CRESCENT The Killer’s Son is under the North Star. Her eyes are weak – day is night – she can see the stars in daylight. NUN ONE She’s blind. L’ash and the Killer’s Son pray together. L’ASH, RENNO Dad, sit down. Drink something sweet. Dad. Smoke in peace. Let the TV light crawl through smoke and mystify you. That’s enough, dad, sit down, while your food boils and your whiskers grow. RENNO Sit down, Dad. You’re done. The drummer’s daughter has your bones and is far away at sea. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 29
NUN ONE Blind woman, face lifted, calls to her vanished sight like a falconer. L’ASH Daddy, smoke. Tell your joke. Eat boil and parallel your shoes for the long sit. RENNO Sir, you are done now. Sin has become something else. NUN ONE Inside one prayer, Renno hides another. RENNO L’ash, be safe. L’ash. Peace. CRESCENT The sisters anesthetize L’ash with blowfish acupuncture. They twist the head of a gull. They replace L’ash’s eyes with seagull eyes. (This operation, performed.) Hand, oar, consciousness, beat opening into merliture. Four CRESCENT Little sugar nun, peeing off the side of the boat. NUN ONE L’ash, what do you see? L’ASH Grain of sand. There is a persistent Italy Where the clothes are made of China and the sun at the center of The Universe is Genius. We are born crouched, waiting to row. We make landfall and I call these people “Italians.” JOURNAL Day 100. Landfall. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 30
Five (Crash. They arrive at an island.) L’ASH After we are rested, sisters, I mean to embark on an exhaustive lecture tour in order to raise funds for the continuance of our journey. Show me a podium and a water pitcher. Be a dear. CRESCENT They will take out your tongue, they will, they will They will take out your tongue, they will L’ASH (Her speech.) Caramelize sugar in a bronze bowl. Ruth’s embouchure and Esther’s neck swing Christmas curve. Give money. My Jesus Christ, my billy goat, my necklace of spine bones, my blood‐filled spyglass, my handyman, come quickly. Look out on dark Christmas, look with your bones and give money. Save the powder of your elemental grindings and make antimony for the baby. Six remain. Give money. NUN ONE Touring the island, touting the survival thus far, she duns for money until her salt‐
swole tongue bursts. They tear out her tongue and replace it with a kitchen match. CRESCENT With eyes of a gull and kitchen match tongue in a candy seller’s clothes – she returns to the sisters in a convent they’ve made under the overturned boat on the beach. Eyes: by mercy, she receives. Tongue: by assault she transmits. NUN ONE On the way, in the trees, a child’s dress, a child’s pair of pants, a child’s shoe, stuffed with straw. A bird bursts out and jumps to a ball of suet hanging nearby, then returns to chick‐cry. L’ash asks. The island’s inhabitants make birdhouses out of drift‐clothes they find on the beach. Three sets, for three children. The mementos of three more of her brothers and sisters are stuffed with straw and hung. The islanders give L’ash enough money to leave for the last three who must remain hidden in the pages of the expired, arcane sea. CRESCENT The nuns revert the boat. They soak their hands in brine to toughen them for the row again, row. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 31
Six CRESCENT At night, her kitchen tongue flares mourning while the Poor Clares sleep slumped over lumber. (L’ash holds her matchstick tongue aloft.) She’s deaf. What the flat of the shovel left the roar of the waves takes. Sisters try to rebuild her inner ears with snail‐shells. (L’ash listens hard.) The sea freezes over. Seven CRESCENT What do you eat, so long at sea? L’ASH Water tension. JOURNAL Day 472. CRESCENT What do you drink? JOURNAL Air growing colder. L’ASH Salt wine. JOURNAL They ferment salt in bail buckets and stay drunk. CRESCENT What are you dying of most? JOURNAL The moon growing colder. L’ASH I’m not dying. This will be over when I’m out of time. CRESCENT How much time left? Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 32
L’ASH When I’m out of time I will be so happy. NUNS Row. CRESCENT Boat clutches snow and ice, stirring gelid green. The row pauses. Instantly ice in a thin sheet rushes the hull. Rising, the bodies of the remaining children cut reliefs of themselves, intaglio. L’ASH I see them frozen there. They are dead. MOTHERS Deaf Ring High pitched wind Rings a bell Con Con Con Tin Tin Tin Uously. Last three. L’ASH Of course. Of course they are all dead. They were all killed in the church that night. Militia hosed them out. Trucked waste to the river. Goodbye. Goodbye. CRESCENT Between the youngest tucked into his shirt, born dead, killing the last mother… MOTHERS Con e turn tin tin tin it it uit uit ee ee ee ee. CRESCENT They were all hosed to the sea. They were all killed that night. You row in vain. L’ASH Fell in love on an Ash Wednesday. Lent all the time. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 33
MOTHERS E con ter tu it in tuit in ter val in count ter ter tiv tin tin tee tee L’ASH Heavenly shades of night are falling It’s twilight time Deep in the mist a voice is calling ‘Tis twilight time When purple colored curtains mark the end of day I hear you, my dear at twilight time CRESCENT Tintinabular continuity, an eternity of tells. L’ASH How big can this world be and still be the world? Surely this is a dream. The water lies on the land, ice and snow on water and land. On what does the world lie? And when does she rest? I have searched and searched and found only death. CRESCENT Elle apostrophe ay ess aitch. The cross on her head, apostrophe. NUN ONE L’ash. L’ASH Yes, sister? NUN ONE The boat is seizing. The ice is tight. All is hush but for the ruin of the hull. L’ASH Sister, thank you so much for rowing. We make camp here. Shoot the dogs and watch for smoke. JOURNAL Day 600 is a season long. Day never moves, up at the pole. CRESCENT Gull eyes see only remains. Matchstick tongue gives small light and has always the taste of hell. Seashell ears spin a hell of sea sound. Candy seller’s dress: she is disappearing, snow into snow. And now, her hands. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 34
Eight NUN TWO Your hands. CRESCENT Cold. NUN TWO Sister, her hands. NUN ONE We have to do something. CRESCENT They sacrifice the radio. They rob icicle surgical tools from the ruins of the ice city. NUN ONE With gull eyes and kitchen match tongue, clothes of a candy seller, snail shell ears and raggy wire fingers – saltpeter under your nails, you could explode. Blowfish you to numbness. (They inject her with a blowfish needle and operate.) CRESCENT They cut off her gangrened hands. They give her fingers made out of radio wire. Historical echo, at her fingertips. L’ASH Didn’t know Mr. Rowland. Never Knew Mr. Rowland. Never knew Sarah Page. It was a day. CRESCENT Sunday, June 6, 1921, City Special. ALL TRAINS OUT OF CITY JAMMED WITH REFUGEES. HUNDREDS OF NEGROES BUY ONE WAY TICKETS OUT OF TULSA, AGENTS SAY. A general exodus of Negroes from the city has taken place since the rioting ceased Wednesday. All local passenger stations have been crowded with Negroes buying one‐way tickets out of the city. An approximate estimate was made last night that between 1,000 and 1,500 of them have left in the last three days. They have been [tear] for every city from New York to San Francisco at the Frisco and Santa Fe office, railway officials announced. The Katy and Midland Valley offices have sold a large number of tickets for Muskogee and McAlester. More than five Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 35
times as many Negroes have left Tulsa in the last four days than at any other one period in the history of the city, the information clerk at the Frisco station said. However, all of the Negroes who left Tulsa did not leave by way of the railway stations, as has been indicated by reports from surrounding towns of hundreds of blacks fleeing in all directions. The general exodus really began Tuesday night and became more spirited the faster the bullets flew Wednesday morning. Nine L’ASH There – FATHER Fingers of night surrender sun. NUN ONE At night, an eye for discard, she sees – L’ASH (Caressing Nun One’s face.) I have to go. FATHER Each day I pray for evening just to be with you. L’ASH Go ahead and use up the end of the rations. Barley soup. Green Tea. Peppermint sticks for dessert. NUN ONE You won’t come back. CRESCENT L’ash, with a gull’s eye for detritus, sees a flash of silver, different from the ice around it. She sets off, no supplies of any kind. NUN ONE This far up in the century unexploded NATO ordnance comes to light at the pole, when the drift blows snow back. L’ASH Search – I search for Dad because he is most missing. Percus: by means of cuss. I am cussed to look for him Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 36
NUN ONE L’ash, that’s a rocket ship. L’ASH Wait here. Cutter’s coming. I love you. Cutter’ll take you back. CRESCENT The ash is the earth she wears. Ten NUN ONE With nine dead behind her, she leaves our care, and climbs into a rocket ship. She goes to Mars. CRESCENT L’ash rises noiselessly. Nuns, widows, and un‐blood mothers sing the ship to space. NUNS, MOTHERS Go then if you want to Fly a rocket ship to Mars Twilight lover, oscillate Mid twinkle of the stars Spit out your gum Ride space Earth is No place Assumption feast Snow bread Ice yeast The earth is The least of it Sigh space CRESCENT She adventures – L’ASH Up! Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 37
Eleven (L’ash lands on Mars. She comes upon a very old man.) CRESCENT This is the surface of the planet Mars. Colder than the Arctic in the shadows, but no water for ice and the air is very thin. L’ASH Who are you? FATHER You know who I am? L’ASH I thought that maybe I saw you up here. That’s why I’ve been riding the in‐between light. Planets show best. FATHER I saw you too. L’ASH Why didn’t you wave your hand? FATHER I’ve been busy, candy girl. L’ASH You know, I am your daughter. FATHER No. I forgot. L’ASH You know my name? FATHER No, ma’am. L’ASH Want me to tell you? FATHER No, ma’am. I don’t deserve it. L’ASH I don’t know that I know you by your first name. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 38
FATHER I’ve got to get back to work. L’ASH What do you do up here? FATHER I farm. L’ASH What do you farm? FATHER I farm oxygen. I breathe this way. (They breathe together.) CRESCENT There is a burn mark on his chest where he held his dead child the night he was struck down. He’s smoke. The smoke bears a mark at the height a man’s chest would be. The suffering is the color of smoke in smoke. FATHER L’ash. L’ASH I breathe you in, I breathe you out. Comparing my lips to yours, I have no more mouth for you. FATHER This is a world of stone. This is a barter for less breath and less breath and less breath. This is your speech ceding to whisper and your will slipping to wish and wish wearing away on stone. Stay. Come undone. (L’ash separates herself.) CRESCENT She blows the invisible man out into the thin atmosphere forever. Twelve NUNS A sail! Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 39
CRESCENT Months after the nuns are rescued, the space ship falls back to earth, burning a hole in the ice. NUN ONE We receive into our silence a girl from Oklahoma. She is too young for vows – she works outside the walls, but comes back nights. She sneaks some of us candy, but eats none herself. She sits with us at compline Friday evenings, but does not know the Latin. Her name is L’ash. She barely speaks. She comes into our silence like a tuck in a clean sheet. Her eyes are as brown as the world. CRESCENT The rocket ship comes down from Mars, brighter than it came, flashing. NUN ONE Dead in her bed, fourteen. We talk about her, and sing her like she’s 1950’s, but she didn’t make it to 1925. Thirteen NUN ONE She is a girl NUN TWO This is her bed NUN ONE She is fourteen This is where she lies dead L’ASH I reach behind my head and twist my hair. I am the size of the whole ocean, a whole note. I am fourteen. I am old. CRESCENT This is the figure for twist. This carved figure is fourteen. This is the word in bone language for old. (L’ash goes to heaven and embraces something invisible.) CRESCENT This is how she ends. And she knows it in her bones. Who are you? Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 40
L’ASH I lay my hair across the breast of heaven. I am circle over circle Stars are broken jam jars. My kin are wheels inside the wheel I twist my hair The circle is in the circle The wheel is in the wheel What I shape is what I feel D: Crescent One MOTHER Who are you? CRESCENT Crescent, called also Scent, Senda or Sender. MOTHER But who are you? CRESCENT L’ash is my mother. MOTHER L’ash has a daughter? NUNS We didn’t want to tell you. MOTHER She was fourteen. How did –? RENNO I got something to tell you. L’ASH I got to break these boxes down, then I go home. RENNO You know who I am. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 41
L’ASH As much as I need to. Look, I got to work. RENNO You been asking around about me. L’ASH You the Holy Spirit? You free money? Then no, I haven’t been asking after you. RENNO My father came to you. NUNS The color of suffering is smoke in smoke White fire, burning resin, and the smoke – NUN ONE In the shape of the thinking of the fire. NUNS Follows you. L’ASH You’re the killer’s son. Robert Carl’s boy. RENNO I know what you want to know. And I have something to give you. NUN ONE He takes the drumsticks out of his back pockets. He makes the beat‐beat‐beat like breadcrumbs – tells her mixed‐up things about her Daddy, getting the chronology wrong but the Daddy right, making up things about her Mom, and lying about brothers and sisters left living in the world. She follows, beat at a time, to a low and narrow place, where Killer’s Son sets upon her. The next day, Ash Wednesday, she takes cross on her head again. L’ASH I lift – NUN ONE She dies in childbirth. L’ASH Fire in my head when I die. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 42
MOTHER *L’ash has a daughter? NUN ONE L’ash has a daughter by her killer’s son. L’ash dies in childbirth, dreaming about finding her brothers and sisters. Renno took her against burst candies in a hallway. NUN TWO In the manner of the mothers in her family, she does not understand she is pregnant until she is in labor in a bathtub. L’ASH (Delivering.) Um, excuse me. EXCUSE THE BEJESUS OUTTA ME! NUN ONE Delivers in the tub, hair flowing up the tiles. NUN TWO Her name is Crescent. For she is born under a skinny moon. CRESCENT You could eat the maraschino cherry right off my tendered lips, you could. I lift my tongue a bit and you smell champagne made out of crisis and pure gold. My throat comes up through jewelry, my arms come through a good coat. Do deadly things to yourself in my presence and live, even if you want to die. Big chocolate chips in a cream cake. You can slide the cake from the fork and want to die but I will be singing the everlasting sting. I am quite wonderful, thank you. NUN ONE We foster her out to Dominicans in Pittsburgh. Many years go by. Now, 1950’s; she’s the twilight sender. NUN TWO Crescent works in a Radio Shack. NUN ONE She is in five bands. (Crescent sings with one of her bands for an audience.) CRESCENT Coltrane is an opera singer He is our greatest tenor. Hieroglyph bones play saxophone Major against minor. Mother Mary, where the hell are you? If that is not your hand at my elbow, Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 43
Don’t know what I’ll do. Know just what I’ll do but I Don’t know what I’ll do. NUN ONE Not rich, she sells her old records and her tears. She will have vinyl again when she resolves in heaven’s revolving dark. She has no tears until they are returned to her as stars. MOTHER Does Crescent know –? CRESCENT I am walking out of vigil mass to night shift and later a gig with a four‐piece at a Dairy Queen. Travelling west under the ruined sweets of twilight, between church, work and mysticism I am followed by a ghost that takes form in the nearest available smoke, frankincense curling loose out of the censer. NUNS This is the shape of shape in shape This is the weight of weight without heaviness, the color of suffering. Two L’ASH You are taken from embrace of my death, same as Delphine was lifted from Father’s chest. Delphine is born dead, but you are taken from my dead arms living. God wanted to see if there was a difference between being born living and born dead, I suppose. (L’ash, as smoke, holds Crescent.) CRESCENT Smoke, let me go. Sing away the rocket, mama. You’re breaking my – Let go! L’ASH Stand on a porch and count the moons of Mars. CRESCENT Nine, ten, eleven moons. NUN ONE Ten dead satellites circle the round relic’s indifference. There’s Delphine, Annabella, Brienen, Makiah, Rain, Detta, Roma, Joyful, Celina, and L’ash. There is Crescent. How long will they wait? Circling the cracking globe. Stand on a porch. Count moons. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 44
CRESCENT Nine, ten, eleven moons. L’ASH He was an average man who met with a tragic death. He has already been divided to his awkward average and we cannot sort him. Here in the afterglow of day We keep our – CRESCENT Rendezvous beneath the blue. L’ASH, CRESCENT Falling, falling It’s twilight time. NUN ONE With L’ash missing mother and Crescent a father, together mother and child make one orphan. With one fathered and the other mothered, together they make one family’s child. Dead Crescent walks the desert. She comes upon a great pyramid. Her aunts and uncles are sitting on the sides holding candles. L’ash is the uppermost candle. Snow falls in Egypt land. L’ash takes Crescent’s hand. Heaven catches Lash’s hair and they are up in the wheel of heaven. Mother and daughter together are twilight. L’ASH Look down there, Crescent. What do you see? CRESCENT All edges to rust, all heavy to rest, hell to heaven and heaven lying down. The end of all cities. L’ASH My mother, many mothers live. Clean as atoms, combining like thunder, trailing applause like rain or the fruitful hiss on the vinyl as the needle hits the opera, they sing and live. So many live, Crescent. So many. L’ASH, CRESCENT Fill our hearts Fill our hearts with suffering Break our hearts with suffering And open us to joy. Awake in the world let us suffer. Break our suffering with joy. Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 45
We concentrate on peace. Break our hearts with suffering. Open us to joy. L’ASH There you are. CRESCENT There you are. L’ASH Where were you? CRESCENT Where were you? L’ASH Voice. CRESCENT My voice. L’ASH You set the table. CRESCENT With invisible hand. L’ASH In the house of the inner ear. CRESCENT Gyroscope architecture of sounding love. L’ASH Voice has come home inside your face, singer. CRESCENT The universe is the spiral shell of inner ear. L’ASH Love is pulse. The End Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling 1/12/10 MARIA KIZITO by Erik Ehn 1
MARIA KIZITO (See end notes) Prologue TERESA (In a room.) May I have your permission? Your permission to travel? To travel to Belgium? To see the young nuns? My father will pay. May I deceive you? May I leave aside the veil and stay in a narrow hotel near a construction site? May I take an unscheduled leave to see Maria Kizito? May I watch and discover what our Sister was thinking? There are enough dead finally to make one wonder. She is enough an individual to expose something in myself, or, well, someone nearly like me. Two nuns are on trial for the deaths of 7,000. (She rides to Belgium in a small, silver plane.) MARIA (Praying in the dark.) MY HEART IS A JERRICAN A JERRICAN OF – (A knock.) This is quiet. This is private. This is God. I am in God. I give myself in faith to God. This is morning. This is begun. This is time to go away shut up and good morning. (Starlight intensifies, fades.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 2
April 15­19 TERESA Third Nocturn of Vigil. Sisters pray from the Bible of Genocide. SISTERS O God, come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the – SISTERS [Hymn] Tuesday April 17 Our fear of the threat too great We left our homes And went to hide with the nuns Behind their gate Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, World without end. Amen. *The church was open – So we went inside. Get out; go home. We did leave, but we came back. SISTER [Reading] *As soon as the Mother Superior, Gertrude Mukangango saw the refugees enter the church, she ran, she ran over and told them to go, to get out and go home. They did but came back at about 4 in the afternoon. This time, they went to the Health Center, where they stayed. REFUGEES [Hymn] Where on earth does she expect us to go? The children gnash their teeth It rains in sheets, it rains through the night, And there is nowhere else to go – But the hostel, the chapel, your empty rooms; Do not turn us into the night. MARIA [Psalm 22] My heart has become like wax, it melts away within. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can number all my bones. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 3
GERTRUDE Glory, glory, glory as it was – SISTERS The people who were already inside made a hole in the wall, and they got in. SISTER [Reading] The next day, it rained heavily. TERESA The rain makes the clouds bright even at night. The rain makes the ground bright as setting concrete. Hundreds stand as rain would stand if it could get back up off the ground. Pissed off. SISTER [Reading continued] There were many of them, and more kept coming. They could not all take shelter at the Health Center and wanted to come inside the compound of the monastery. They reached the entrance but the gate, always open, was locked. SISTERS Tooth, crack on rain’s cold sink Mouth all thumbs, Baby, tight, broken breath SISTER [Reading continued] Faced with the cries of the children, the wailing and shaking of the soaked refugees, nearly all the Sisters told Gertrude that she should let the refugees take shelter. There was no shortage of space; the monastery had a hostel, a chapel – other empty rooms. Gertrude refused. (A woman, Chantal, makes a convent with a child’s blocks.) CHANTAL She locked all the doors. We tried to climb in. Pregnant women were climbing. Others managed to get through the cypress hedge and in between the barbed wire. (The Woman holds her head back, mouth open. Water pours in. She fills her cheeks. She walks across the blocks, on tiptoe. A door slams.) TERESA Chantal Kayigirwa was trying to climb in when she fell off with her baby, injuring her head. (Chantal steps down off a block. She swallows the water.) They come through. MARIA They swallow paper and write on it with their insides. We read their protest poetry smeared on the wall, then scrub it as if it were just another day. (Maria scrubs a Refugee’s fingernails with a fingernail brush, furiously.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 4
REFUGEE Kizito came and took the children, myself included, down to the cellar where they made communion wafers, but she came back later and drove us out. (From the radio, whistles and drums.) RADIO All right, all right, then listen then… (Music.) MARIA I am from the hill. Essentially, I am original to this hill. I have seen, essentially, this hill… (Making hosts.) Obey is shadow. I was a girl. Nothing is better at reproducing than death. Shadow, obedience, says yes, yes, there you are – says to power you are so definite behold even your negative has a shape. (To Gertrude.) Sister, they are climbing over the gates GERTRUDE They are good gates MARIA They are spreading the barbed wire. GERTRUDE The wire works. MARIA They are coming. More are coming. GERTRUDE It is raining. MARIA They are falling. GERTRUDE There are only so many of them. MARIA They’re right outside. GERTRUDE They’re falling. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 5
MARIA We’re inside. GERTRUDE (To Refugees.) You’re falling. Ha ha ha. MARIA (To Refugees.) Go away. GERTRUDE Ha ha ha. MARIA Ha ha ha. GERTRUDE Sh. By the mouth you die. (Gertrude disappears. Sisters kneel, facing various directions. They adore the Eucharist.) SISTERS Nobis donet in patria. MARIA Mass is making a hole. I make a hole, a hole in the day. One two three four five six seventy eighty ninety… Everyone must do it so that everyone is done then we are falling so fast so far we are not even moving. One, two, three, four hundred, five hundred, six hundred. Sovu, Butare, Kigali, Gikongoro… God is what is left when we give everything away. Vocation is when you are only a space. Citizenship is the hole through which emergency rushes. Country is what is left after you have given the citizens to God. REFUGEE [Reading] Kizito told us that they were taking a census so they could know our exact number and feed us. She asked us to draw up a list of our names, family by family. She came from here; we thought she was worried about us. We waited for food, in vain. We received nothing from the nuns, not even a banana for the babies. Kizito was counting. “If there are any Hutus, could they stand to one side?” Kizito told them to leave us, so that we would die of hunger. We waited for the rebel army, a rebel army, anybody’s helicopter, any opposing blade... We waited for God, for food, in vain. (A door slams, heads turn. Prayer resumes) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 6
REFUGEES Karuhay and Karido Cassien and Kabera Sweet potatoes or bananas Pascasie Nyanirimo Kizito lied to us. Kizito lied to us. Kizito lied to us. Kizito lied to us. TERESA We are making a goat, a hyena. We are making a Maria Kizito, to walk away from us, to take the blade or scavenge the abominable. If we can make her live, we can make her walk away. (Cleans her glasses. Maria cleans her glasses too, and studies Teresa.) MARIA She watches me sit my station: the defendant’s glass box Watches me in glasses behind glass. Glad! I’m glad they’re dead! I did not throw up once. (Maria pours a pitcher of milk out onto the floor. There is a length of chain at the bottom of the pitcher. It slurps out.) SISTERS [Canticle: Te Deum] Have mercy on us; Amen. MARIA I clear God from the drain so spirit may flow through. (Gertrude and Maria nap spooned. Sisters join them.) TERESA The younger nun, Maria Kizito, is accused of providing gasoline to the militia, which was used to burn 3 to 500 victims alive. I consider this as a dire knick‐knack – a snowglobe filled with napalm. I consider this with music as if this were the plot of a toy ballet. A decimal error. A lie. A ghost story I am at last old enough to talk myself out of and go to sleep. As if this were on an African scale and by that measure, not so many dead. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 7
April 20­21 (Sisters pray Terce.) SISTERS, REFUGEES O God, come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father Warrant Officer Rekeraho and to the Son Arrived at the monastery and to the Holy Spirit, With Gaspard Rusanganwa. as it was in the beginning, Kizito was always going out with Rekeraho. is now, I don’t know where they went. and ever shall be, * On 20 April between 5 and 7:30 p.m, Warrant Officer Rekeraho arrived with Gaspard Rusanganwa. At 9 a.m. on 21 April we heard noise, whistling, and shouting. world without end. REKERAHO (Overlapping above from * on.) *On 20 April between 5 and 7:30 p.m. I went to see my friend Gaspard Rusanganwa, the Assistant Burgomaster of Ngoma, who lived next to the monastery. Gertrude Mukangango and Julienne Kizito joined me there. We talked about Habyarimana’s death. I didn’t like the man, but I didn’t want him to die. (A small plane crashes.) We were sad that his plane had been shot down by the Inyenzi. Sister Gertrude said we must avenge him. (Maria pulls a bloody rag from the wall, and makes a glass of milk pink.) She said Sindikubwabo was right to call the Hutus of Butare “ntibindeba.” SISTER He led the militia and some ex‐soldiers, and used to drive the nun’s ambulance, using a microphone inside it to call the Hutus to kill the Tutsis. They had given him the vehicle so that he would accompany them in town when they did their shopping. REKERAHO On 20 April, 1994, I became intimate with the nuns. I exchanged confidences with them. GERTRUDE You see all these Tutsis In the monastery? You cannot say where Maria Kizito 8/29/11 8
They’ll hide my dead body They could kill me They could kill me In Sovu. REFUGEE I am thin as rain. MARIA There’s no rice. REFUGEE There are as many grains of rice inside as there are drops of rain outside. Feed my child, don’t feed me. MARIA I don’t give rain. I don’t give rice. REFUGEE Sister. Sister of God. MARIA If your mouth is full of words, how will you eat? (Silence.) If you won’t tell me what you want, how will I know to feed you? Maybe you had better leave. Give me your name. (The Refugee writes her name across her own belly. Maria erases it.) Yes, you will leave. Open your mouth. Yes, full of death. REFUGEE I have two sticks They break they burn I have no sticks To boil the green For soup I have no son Tree made of sticks Sticks shake out in this bitch of a wind Stick by stick and splinter There is no tree We lose our land And I have no son REKERAHO I ordered the young Hutus, the Interahamwe, though I don’t like the term, to surround the Maria Kizito 8/29/11 9
monastery and Health Center. We killed all those who tried to escape. The play was to kill all of them. (The Interahamwe drain beer bottles, kneel, and use them as rolling pins to grind sugar cubes.) TERESA Their bones are made of sugar. REKERAHO After that, I went to have a beer. (Tree branches pray the rosary. Maria retreats into the dark. Radio plays.) GERTRUDE Go to the gate. Bring him back. (Maria finds Rekeraho.) REKERAHO Good morning, little sister. MARIA Good morning, boss. (Whispering.) Chief Rekeraho? REKERAHO Yes, little sister. MARIA We can’t do our own shopping now. Get me something. REKERAHO What would you like? Would you like some music? MARIA You know I have nothing to play music on. REKERAHO You get all your music from the radio. MARIA Yes, chief, yes. Ha ha ha! GERTRUDE Follow close, Sister. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 10
REKERAHO What would you like? MARIA Something. Anything. REKERAHO Something to eat? MARIA I have an appetite to eat it with. Ha ha ha! REKERAHO You want a surprise. GERTRUDE Here we are. Now what is it? REKERAHO Every surprise is a signal. MARIA (To herself.) There was a plane in the sky, then a plane from the sky, then bright bleach of explosion, then even my teeth are shadows. REKERAHO They will come here at a signal. MARIA The hardest part of being a nun is I know exactly what kind of shoes I will be wearing for the rest of my life. The hardest part of being the nun I am is, you will never know when I am telling a joke. I do and do, laughter without cause, a sentence stripped of nouns – the language of the angels all torn down. (A starving Refugee dies.) What is in your eye, dead woman? Mote? Lash? (She pulls something out of the dead woman’s eye.) Radio. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 11
April 22 (Before Noon) – The Massacres Begin (Sisters pray the hour of Sext.) GERTRUDE [Ps. 79.] God, they seize your inheritance; dirty your holy places. They devour Jacob. DOMATILE [Reading] We heard whistles, drumming and chanting. We used our wraps to collect bricks and stones. The militia reached the gate. REFUGEES The police protecting us began to shoot at us. We threw bricks and stones at them; They threw grenades. Children died: Murangwa and Eugenie. My sister Mukabutera – hit in the shoulder. I was hit by shrapnel in the ribs. Athanase Biseruka’s son had a leg blown off Someone else was blown to pieces in front of me. DOMATILE When I got hit, I made my way towards them so that they would finish me off. They threw a stone and split my lip. You can still see the scar. GERTRUDE, DOMATILE I will listen for the word of God; surely the Lord will proclaim peace To his people, and to his saints. Justice and peace will kiss. REFUGEE Let us in, inside the cloister. They will not hurt us there. MARIA They will break my face to my back teeth if they find you in here. REFUGEE You know them. They won’t – MARIA You must go out. They want you. They whistle and drum you. They banana leaf and ash face you. They tendon you, they cello you to broken string. They pull you tight as oath under constraint then break you like a lie. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 12
The sooner God, the better The killing starts at 7:30 after prayers and breakfast Day may not remove itself from day (To Teresa.) You have no knowledge of the situation if you don’t believe a threat against nuns and religious is credible. REFUGEE Outside the Health Center I tried to lie down and pretend I was dead, but couldn’t find any way down to the ground. I was being careful with my belly because I was pregnant. Early, the militia spared their ammunition and my neighbors came in side by side with them, working farm tools – hoes, axes, machetes. My tendon – I was crawling down bodies and away. They caught – I was turning, protecting my belly and breasts – caught my back. The man I was crawling down, his neck was cut and I was making my way to earth. They caught – Sometimes takes a number of blows – life finds many absurd hiding places – they – neighbor, militia, police, army – caught my leg and cut my tendon; I lay loose as a dead bird’s head but was really a bird sleeping. MARIA I turn my face to the window – but – I do not have to see water to know it will beat through the spigot or watch a cloud of flour to know it will fall or to stay for the flies to rise from the dead to know the worm works. Her stunned eye… and suddenly a hundred dead for the cost of forty bullets because the bullets pass through the hair and skin to skulls behind, then the Interahamwe at Rekeraho’s order wade in with machetes. Blood‐sick angels let blood, machetes rain through the bleach of our sky. I know psalms – they increase in number, anything may be counted, high as you can go, all this is only done, built of rain, built of dust, dog shit and hyena laughter. I’m glad my mouth is shut because I worry that the children are learning bad words, the children between the legs of the killers, who trip, killing. If everyone, then none, no one. If absolute, then nothing. This is good mysticism. (Finding two children.) Come here, come here. (Taking them by the hands.) Here are two children. REKERAHO/RADIO Good Music! Good music! This song is a favorite in Kigali. You know it. Now listen, listen – this is the wind, I am the wind, you hear me when you walk. I tell you joy is good hard work – I have seen you dance. Some of you sweat. Who is waiting by the wall? Now everybody works. Everybody sweats. This is good. Clear the brush. Chop weeds. More room for dancing. Eat the cattle, more room for dancing. Pick up your feet and bring them down – scatter the cockroaches. There was a revolution in ’59; there is a party every day. There is one road out – our long road, the road given us by God. Put the Inkotanyi back in the river and send them home to Egypt, their melting fat running shiny in the water. Pharaoh has a home for them in the cities of the dead. We here – we do not need to sleep. I am a young Maria Kizito 8/29/11 13
man. I am a young man. The purpose of the river is to make room for me. The purpose of cultivation is to make room, make room. We are a Hutu nation. Do you understand this? Do you accept this? Then: We are under attack from within and without. We must pull together. The sharpest voices and most extreme suggestions are not extreme enough. Me may have to kill people. Do you accept this responsibility? We do have to kill people. We all have to kill people, working together. Time for work. MARIA (She delivers the children to the Interahamwe.) And the children are killed. I feel I am reading the Bible for the first time The early days of the insistent inhuman This will come up in prayer When the fallen have fallen And the radio plays old music. The tire of the van will roll over this one’s knee, his skull. My heart is a yellow jerrican A jerrican of gasoline. Red. White. Yellow. Raping the bloody. I am in God. I know I am in God. TERESA Gapyisi. Gapyisi. What did you do? MARIA The 22nd they were killed in the Health Center and around the Health Center. Grenades, guns, then machetes and farm tools. TERESA Gapyisi. Gapyisi. What did you do? MARIA I folded, I prayed, I gardened, I condemned laziness and fear – then walked among the dead and the fakes because this is work and I had a list. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 14
TERESA Gapyisi. Ga – MARIA The 23rd we moved the hidden, revealed, to rows of 30; killed them by zone and we brought the soldiers beer. Someday I will be Mother Superior ha ha ha – (Claps her hand over her mouth.) DOMATILE We were stood in lines of 30, the courtyard of the Center Nowhere for your foot without stepping on a corpse I set my four children where I could see them, my baby on my back I said, children, pray – we are going to die They took my first four children They were all killed before my eyes Then they stuck a spear into my back, which pierced my baby And pierced me When the baby fell to the ground, he was already dead I felt something warm on my face. I tried to get up. They hit me on the head three times with a machete. They said over me: MARIA, DOMATILE This one is called Domatile. DOMATILE Among them I saw Sister Maria Kizito, the daughter of Semanyana of Sovu. She was in the middle talking to her brothers who were with the attackers. She was giving them a list. Next to Sister Kizito was a man called Karangwa, Who was dancing in front of her with a spear in his hand. It was 10 in the morning. SISTERS Lauds Little hours Vespers Compline Vigil MARIA One more day and Christ will come One more day and Christ will come Maria Kizito 8/29/11 15
April 22 (Afternoon) (The sun burns out. Many candles lit. Sext continues.) REFUGEE They discovered there were a lot of people in the garage. They said they would have to burn them because they had barricaded the door. Rekeraho came with Kizito and two cans of petrol. Rekeraho said: REKERAHO (Over ambulance microphone.) *“Bashiki bacu baratugo boste.” REFUGEE *“Our Sisters have come to our aid.” (Maria burns sugar in the flames.) Rekeraho gave one can to Vincent Byomboka who had some dry grass. Vincent packed the grass in a ditch they had dug by the garage wall, and poured the petrol out. I saw Casilde stoned to death. Ngaboniza was cut to pieces. Bernadette came out burning to death. Many people died inside the garage. (A man dances in front of Maria. Refugees feed franc notes to candle flames.) I saw the daughter of Semanyana, that is Sister Julienne Kizito. She had a second, seven‐
liter jerrycan of petrol. She gave it to an Interahamwe from her family called Niyonsenga. He poured the petrol over Kabirigi and set him on fire. Kabirigi ran while burning. I was there. It was the day that my family died. (Kabirigi’s burning dance recalls Karangwa’s dance.) MARIA (Walking carefully among the dead.) See how wicked these Tutsi are. They’ve torn up their banknotes so the Hutu can’t use them. They should all be killed. (The scene at the garage plays.) INTERAHAMWE Open up. REFUGEE No. INTERAHAMWE Open – REFUGEE No. We are too many to move, even if we wanted to. (The Interahamwe padlocks the door from the outside.) Let me out. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 16
INTERAHAMWE No. REFUGEE Let me out. INTERAHAMWE No. REFUGEE (To others in the garage.) The door is too heavy to break through, now they have locked it outside. MARIA (Gathering tinder.) Fetching straw making garland praying rosary is making thorn we gather to crown, the gift of bloody hole. What were we doing when we lay the branches? We were praying. We are always praying. (Refugees chop at the door with pruning hooks – the sound of clicking rosaries.) REKERAHO Bashiki bacu baratugo boste. (Dry grass and gasoline. We see inside the garage a woman pours water on another woman’s head.) BAPTIZED REFUGEE Hide me, Mary, hide me. (Fire comes upon her, embraces her.) MARIA I believe it was Mary who braided the crown of thorns and this is the model for the rosary. All saints lie in flame. TERESA She makes coffee in a dead woman’s mouth with a teaspoon of earth. She makes bread out of chewed grass on the dead woman’s belly. She makes gasoline out of wet nerves inside the dead woman’s teeth, and siphons it into 7 beer bottles. She makes candles out of the woman’s eyes. She makes beer from fat. She pulls a city out of the salt at the base of the woman’s throat, with tweezers. She is gasoline. (Dialogue with fire. A Refugee burns to death.) FIRE Catch breath arch‐back. Sweat and elbow. Rapid pop. Skin as fuel. I am hundred. I am thousand. Go to the floor. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 17
REFUGEE Go away. FIRE Electricity fills water. A scream fills a jaw. Every day, within a mile of you, someone feels such fear. Today I say we feel this fear together. REFUGEE I do not recall my child’s name to call it. The woman next to me has choked to death on smoke. I remember the name of my child, and cannot call. FIRE Move or don’t move. I can take your place. REFUGEE Every system in my body created to signal pain flashes, taking pictures, bulbs in perpetual burst till pupil explodes too. I have to let this go. I cannot talk to you anymore. FIRE I am the white at your lips. I will hear your every whisper. REFUGEE What they’re saying is right. I am not right for this job. FIRE What job? REFUGEE The job of feeling this pain. FIRE You are not expected to do well. You are expected to die. REFUGEE What do you get? FIRE A space in which to be until you are not. REFUGEE Watch spring. Hear a snap. All my contents are in utter, all speech is vowels, every vowel pulled against itself, my biology is ripped vowel sounds. And with this screeching alphabet I call Jesus and all my loved ones; I curse Jesus and forget my loved ones. I am not sure if I am dying in sin or grace or if I am dying because my alphabets weld to Babel. Tongue bursts gallons. This is my death. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 18
FIRE You think it is gone. REFUGEE I think it is gone. FIRE It is when you think it is gone it is killing you. REFUGEE I feel it. FIRE It is when you feel it, it is killing you. REFUGEE I think – FIRE Do you think thinking hides you? It is just about to kill you if you are thinking. REFUGEE But I say – FIRE When you are saying this you are dead. (Dialogue over.) MARIE Heaven Has no faith Eye of God has nothing to see REFUGEE The massacre started 9 in the morning and lasted until 5. At 5:30, six gendarmes came and told the killers to loot only. It was too early to sleep. I stayed among the corpses. Babies were sucking at the breasts of dead mothers, I thought about killing them to save them from suffering, but could not. I saw a head carried by on a branch like a lantern. The next day, they saw me breathing. I was rousted. I walked towards the blows. Kill me, kill me, friend. Kill me. (At the trial in Belgium.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 19
GERTRUDE Rekeraho called me to tell me that tomorrow was the time. We locked ourselves in a room and prepared to die. There was no hope. I was 36 years old and this was the end of my life. I had to accept it, to rise above the suffering. I was annihilated; I no longer knew how to reflect. MARIA At the time of the events. we all suffered. Me too: these events were directed against me. If it was necessary to die, I had to remain with my community. On the 22nd, I did not leave the monastery. The gasoline is an invention. I never furnished it. The love I bear for Sister Gertrude urged me to accompany her with Rekeraho to give him the ambulance. Otherwise, I did not go with him at all. When they arrived, each sister did her best to help the refugees. We served them food. I never saw in the file that my brothers were Interahamwe. I did not know it and I do not believe it; if they were militia they would be in prison now. TERESA Counter to what certain witnesses claim, she denies she is known by the nickname gapyisi, the name of an animal. Hyena. MARIA Je ne suis ni Hutu ni Tutsi, je suis un enfant de Dieu, je suis une Rwandaise, au Belge. Je n'ai voulu aucun mal. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 20
Interlude (Maria sets out teaspoons. She tears small pieces of bread from a round loaf, dips them in gasoline, places one piece in each spoon‐bowl, and sets the bread on fire. Stink. Teresa watches from a distance. Gertrude enters. Maria is surprised at first, but then knows who it is.) MARIA Will we get the death penalty? GERTRUDE Belgium doesn’t have the death penalty. MARIA But this is an international trial. GERTRUDE It’s a Belgian trial, under a new law. MARIA Oh. Is that good? GERTRUDE Good? MARIA I am not ready to go to God. GERTRUDE Don’t be an idiot. MARIA For how long will we go to jail? GERTRUDE Many years. MARIA Can we receive phone calls? GERTRUDE Sure. MARIA Visitors? Maria Kizito 8/29/11 21
GERTRUDE I will recommend against it. MARIA But – GERTRUDE Yes, sure. MARIA We’re nuns. Cloistered Benedictine nuns… Vows of silence – we live in cells. GERTRUDE Yes. MARIA So what is Jail? GERTRUDE Not the same. MARIA Perhaps there are parts of this I am not able to imagine. GERTRUDE Yes. MARIA I live in Belgium now. TERESA Trial in a foreign language comes true slowly, as in a dream. The full, formal weight of Poleart’s demented rock‐pile .brought to bear on these small few. Bad nuns, but ridiculous first trial. These are the best génocidaires you could find to test your law? You may touch the hem of Christ’s robe and be healed. You may touch the hem of genocide, and if you believe, you may suffer. Do I have such belief? Do I believe in genocide? If I can believe in Christ, why can’t I believe in genocide? MARIA My heart is a jerrican, a jerrican of gasoline. My mind is evaporation, my fingers are my shadow and my body is a lie. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 22
April 23­25. Massacres: Second Wave (Vespers.) SISTERS O God, come to my aid. SISTERS, GERTRUDE O Lord, make haste to help me. SISTERS Glory be to the – SISTER That evening, Gertrude told all the Sisters whose relatives had taken refuge in the monastery to send them away in order to save the monastery. SISTERS We turned a deaf ear to her request. TERESA Praying Vespers I saw – (Maria prays over a wounded woman under a bush.) MARIA O clement, o loving, o sweet Virgin Mary… (She signals the Interahamwe.) REFUGEE No, Sister – no, Sister – no, Sister – no. (The Refugee starts to crawl away. Maria holds her down.) MARIA It is time for the soul to leave the body. *“Iyo inzoka yizilitse ku gisabo ugomba kikimena ukabona uko uyika.” TERESA *“In killing a snake curled around a gourd you break the gourd if you must, to kill him.” SISTERS, REFUGEE [Psalm 102] Days are twisted smoke; my bones burn. I eat ash for bread. I drink salt and My heart is white grass. I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 23
SISTERS Glory be spirit be beginning, now beginning and everything after amen. SISTER [Reading] We saw bodies everywhere; they looked like empty clothes, scattered on the ground. It was a terrible sight. I kept thinking this was the end of the world the Bible spoke of. (Maria delivers drinks.) REKERAHO If I could, I’d appoint you Mother Superior of this monastery. (Maria laughs. Rekeraho leaves. Maria pulls something from his drink. Whistles, drums.) SISTER The sound of whistles and drums comes from a rag pulled from the glass of this milk. (The rag becomes a baby.) MARIA O God O God O God Even when I am anxious I believe you Don’t fuck with me. An old woman in big brown shoes. I will beat you down the street if you interrupt me again. TERESA April 25th. (Maria vomits. Rekeraho lights candles.) REKERAHO 25 April. Monday. I asked Xavier to fetch Mother Superior and Sister Maria Kizito. The two nuns came at once. I told them we had finished killing the Inyenzi at the Health Center, and that we wanted to kill the ones in the monastery. The nuns opened the gate for us; there was a padlock on it. SISTER At about 9 a.m. on Monday, 25 April, Sister Gertrude called us together, along with our families and survivors from the Helath Center. We assembled in the big foyer in the presence of Warrant Officer Rekeraho. (The Sisters rearrange, and kneel facing a common direction. Gertrude and Maria stand. Rekeraho walks among the Nuns, patting them on their heads, calming them.) REKERAHO My girls. (Dove sounds. Gertrude goes into the convent and calls out. Maria shadows her.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 24
GERTRUDE Peace has been restored. Go back to your own hills and your neighbors will help you repair your homes. Those of you not local to Sovu will be given passes; you will have no difficulty getting home. SISTERS Alleluia. REKERAHO, INTERAHAMWE [Bible Reading.] They got 20 people out right away. Gaspard said there had to be more. I asked Kizito to write up a list of all the Tutsi nuns and their relatives. Kizito brought some milk and offered my companions some beer. Thank you, Sister. Thank you, Sister. I was hungry, and that was why I didn’t want to drink any alcohol. I put the Tutsis into three groups: Workers, other refugees, and families of the nuns. MARIA (Pouring milk for Rekeraho.) If there are any Hutus – they should stand aside? SISTER [Reading, continued] Then began the carnage. It was exactly like what happened at the Health Center except they weren’t burnt alive with petrol. (Maria extinguishes all candles by pouring milk on them. The smell of burnt milk.) TERESA A woman with a dead baby on her back made irregular circles – She flapped like a flat tire Around and around looking for air. A woman in the cloister; a woman circling, exhausted Lay her dead child down and lay down next; She could not sleep. Only the living sleep. SISTER I saw Sister Gertrude throw out the cousin of Sister Theonila, a girl from Maraba, a girl of 16 who had been cut on the head with a machete. Rekeraho and his militia were executing the others in the bush behind the monastery. THEONILA’S COUSIN Save me, woman of God. GERTRUDE Go and join your family. TERESA And the girl went to join the others being killed in the bush. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 25
THEONILA Save me, woman of God. SISTERS There will be no birds but crows here There will be no birds but crows. MARIA Make wine of eyelashes. Make beer out of shoes. Make wine out of fingerprint. Make beer out of their dancing, cut to sheaves, milled and stifled in barrels. Make wine and drink it, today is a national holiday. I am sick of the radio, and the radio is still playing. I am sick of the killing and the radio playing. Into the deeper dark stepping backwards into brown, brown shoes I do not adore the Eucharist MARIA, GERTRUDE Now I know what the owl meant When he told us so – Little sister, we don’t have far to go. Angels learn to fly by Falling, Falling. TERESA In a hundred days a million In one hundred years millions, millions. If my number seems low, add from adjacent holes. SISTERS Glory be to – MARIA Go to hell I have ate my fill. I am Original from this hill Wouldn’t snow be – Wouldn’t snow be so much better? I forget. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 26
May 6 – Last Wave TERESA I was praying the first nocturn of my vigil when I saw: (The Bible Reading takes the form of a play. The cast wears owl masks.) Once upon a time there were people in the ceiling and owls throughout the house. Very early in the morning, May 6th... (Maria secures a ladder and speaks to the ceiling.) MARIA Come down. TERESA Many buildings have false ceilings to allow ventilation for the heat. Many people hide in the ceilings. They become a category. (Maria climbs the ladder.) Kizito led the way for the police. She showed them the rooms where the refugees hid. MARIA I will help you go home. TERESA Some of the nuns Gave money to Xavier The policeman guarding the monastery So their relatives might be shot Rather than hacked To death by machete 7,000 francs a person Some of the nuns Told Gertrude They were going to follow the militia To die with their families. MARIA You’ll have to come down now. Are you up there? You’ll have to come down now. TERESA 30 or so remained, in the convent. Family. MARIA Come down now. (Pause.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 27
REFUGEE (Young.) No. MARIA Ah. We have a ladder for you. Come down. REFUGEE No. MARIA Do you want me to come up the ladder? Do you want me to climb up the ladder and maybe break my neck? Do you want me to do that? Do you want me to chase you around the ceiling and maybe fall and break my neck? Do you? Do you want my blood on your hands? (Refugees descend, unmasked.) REFUGEE Where will I go? MARIA Come down, son. Come down. Even Rekeraho says there has been enough killing. The future is full of hope. I will change your fate. I will bring you home. TERESA Up and down the ladder my angel Maria pulls the last few from the ceiling, the families of the Tutsi nuns, because this is no time for good or bad. So be clear and nothing is clearer than nothing. Nothing is clearer than all of them. REFUGEE Mercy. Mercy. MARIA (Delivering the Refugee to his killer.) Here they are. (The children are taken from her.) TERESA Once there was a house of owls. (End of Owl‐play. Nocturn over.) MARIA Bible is a book of glass Book of glass All at once All at once See through To the end Maria Kizito 8/29/11 28
Bible is a book of glass Above all do not drop it Wait one more day and Christ will come Wait one more day and Christ will come (Maria observes her hands and arms.) This is the flesh of a génocidaire? In the moonlight, this is hardly skin at all. Live one more day and Christ will come. Live one more day in Christ and – I will know who my master is. TERESA I came to see, having read in the New York Times. MARIA (Observing Teresa.) Le peu de génocidaire. 29. (Counting the bones of her hands and feet.) One, two three… Maria Kizito 8/29/11 29
Bone (Characters, dispersed, consider events, sometimes hearing each other, sometimes not; sometimes enacting, sometimes witnessing, sometimes erasing. Teresa wraps her fingers.) SISTER Gaza is a shaved head A skeleton reduced to silence, Ashdod, the remnant of their strength, How long will you gash yourself? TERESA They wipe their mouths and pray in Belgium. They devoured their own souls. SISTERS Christ shows down an infinite mercy Infinite mercy Infinite mercy reaches even me Mary is a drum Hollow drum Holy sister is missing teeth Missing teeth Missing teeth, more room for prayer Show me your infinite mercy MARIA (To Teresa.) They are here. TERESA Who? MARIA In Belgium. TERESA Who? MARIA Organizers. The big men. They walk into shops and buy chocolate and porcelain. They are exhausted by eating; they are supported like prostitutes. Given what was done, we did nothing. We know how to bury people, how to pray for them. We could be of use. SISTERS Night falls, Tombée. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 30
What else falls? Egyptian Memphis. One claw Rain Nuns The dead and their sounds Night falls. What else falls? The dead but not your death. The month but not the Easter. The one place but not the other. Everything should fall/everything will rise instead. I make all things actual except for God’s will. SISTER Night falls. What else tumbles, falls? This. My sense of… this. SISTERS Night falls Tombée. What else falls? Food from tables. Epileptics. Silence. TERESA The sky takes the veil but Aline may not. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 31
Belgium TERESA Do you remember? No, I forget; Black water steals The shadow of a jet. Flight from Sovu Belgium Trial Old Age GERTRUDE 1 June, 1994 the RPF takes the capital. 3 July, we evacuate. (To Teresa.) We worked, we lived, you can put your hat back on, this is a private matter. (At the airport, France, waiting for the flight to Belgium.) Maria? MARIA Yes Gertrude. GERTRUDE You’re quiet. MARIA I’m thinking about the goodness of the Blessed Mother. GERTRUDE You’re boring. MARIA Does the airport have a gift shop? GERTRUDE No. MARIA I saw. The airport has a gift shop. GERTRUDE You want a gift? What do you want? MARIA I would like a little gift. From France. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 32
GERTRUDE You will never see France again. MARIA Yes, so – We’re here for such a short time. GERTRUDE Six more hours. MARIA Yes. (Then they’re in Belgium.) TERESA A man named Mommerency writes an article for a tiny communist journal, Solidaire, touching on events at Sovu. It appears July 3rd, 1995. GERTRUDE He names us both. TERESA But Gertrude sues him. For defamation. The attention draws the international eye. Belgium passes laws allowing for civilian trial‐by‐jury of persons accused of universal crimes, regardless of nationality or the origin of the actions. I read the Times. I go to Belgium. (Flying.) If I crash – I may crash! What is my one hope? What do I expect? I hope I make friends. I hope, even crashing, I make friends. SISTER The young white nun sits to observe Kizito. Kizito and co‐defendants hear testimony while secured in a big glass box. There are men on trial too, but these are not – strange enough for Teresa, not as strange as family. Teresa doesn’t know there are Hutus and Tutsis in the audience – she doesn’t yet understand the connectedness of the world. Maria Kizito still loves us, still loves the order. TERESA I watch her every day. (Re: herself.) I am the empathy fairy. The atrocity Tinkerbell. MARIA My French is not very good. Actually, neither is my Kinyarwanda – I was a busy woman. Now I am a busy woman with nothing to do. (To herself, looking out and seeing Teresa.) Maria Kizito 8/29/11 33
She dresses like an out‐of‐habit nun. I can tell. That haircut, and that collar. The shoes. Worldwide. Little girl, the dove leaned into Mary’s ear because there was a worm there. There was room inside Mary for God because her house was empty, day long under the lonely, lonely funeral. TERESA How far will you go together? MARIA How far the whole joke may go. (Gertrude and Maria rise. From the Avocats sans frontiers summary.) GERTRUDE I do not have anything to add. MARIA I thank you. The lawyers have explained everything by grace of their intelligence. Since the beginning, I said that I had confidence in justice. I have courage. I was declared guilty. This is a lie. But I have confidence in justice. I thank you. PRESIDING MAGISTRATE (Reading the verdict.) The court has, in agreement with the jury, condemned Vincent Ntezimana to 12 years in prison, Alphonse Higaniro to 20 years, Sister Gertrude to 15 years and Sister Kizito to 12 years. TERESA (Journaling.) The US threatens to move NATO headquarters out of Brussels if the Belgians do not change the law, for fear of being caught by it. This is the only case in the history of the world to be tried quite this way – where a remote crime is seen as having extreme, local relevance, convergent at the point of absolute human revulsion. Revulsion comes from swallowing, from having within… (Maria and Gertrude go to jail.) MARIA It is a shame we don’t believe in Limbo anymore. GERTRUDE Limbo, that was good. I liked Limbo, yes. MARIA Are you making fun of me? (Silence. Gertrude leaves.) I love sleep more than God. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 34
Old TERESA She ferments air in her mouth For a draught of beer In jail. And she has no animal to keep her dark safe. Six years later – she is later! She is free! Sentence counted as served at half less than a year per thousand. MARIA Sovu – that was Bible time. I was 29. I do not remember the number of this psalm. I smell burnt cinnamon, my lips are fennel. O God, oh God this morning is so beautiful, I am so obviously spared. (Maria takes a walk. In a shop.) TERESA Where would she go? Where does she have, and who will have her? She goes back to the convent, clean and sound and quiet, to live among the nuns again. (On the road to the convent.) SHOPKEEPER Yes, Sr. Kizito. What for you today? MARIA Ink. Milk. Matches. And a cane. SHOPKEEPER What will you do with a cane? MARIA (Discovering.) I – can’t stand up! (She stays standing.) SHOPKEEPER What will you do with the milk? MARIA Serve it to murderers. SHOPKEEPER With the matches? Maria Kizito 8/29/11 35
MARIA Murder. SHOPKEEPER With the ink? MARIA Write this down. I have done what I was told. I have been told wrong things. I have imagined terrible things. I have straddled wealth; walked over the dead. I have failed to envy the dead. I have hidden in fear instead of hiding in God. This century is a few centuries long. This century is an account of holes. This century is skin carved instead of stone, stone carved instead of soil, soil carved instead of soul, soul butchered instead of sacrifice, sacrifice offered rather than known, knowledge rather than heaven, heaven rather than God, God idolized rather than God, God rather than God. Wouldn’t snow be – Wouldn’t snow be so much better? I forget. (She lies down.) TERESA The religion came in with the Germans. The identity cards came in with the Belgians. The cholera came in with the UN camps, too late and then too long. The silence in which our great work shook was held in common by many silent mouths. Umuganda. We work together. (Teresa flies home in a silver jet, above the rain, eating, elbows in.) THARSISSE Rekeraho was an evil man who hated Tutsis. My sister and he were hardly ever apart during the genocide. They were always together in the ambulance, or at the monastery. They had become almost like man and wife. REFUGEE (Reenacting a memory. Maria shadows her.) One of the militiamen at the roadblock knocked me to the ground with a blow from his club. The militia then stripped me completely naked. One of them took me for his wife. He – End Maria Kizito 8/29/11 36
NOTES The play incorporates witness accounts from African Right’s Obstruction of Justice: The Nuns of Sovu, along with material from the trial, and the Catholic Divine Office. Singing; stylized movement – indicated by enjambment and other textual cues. Choral speech is divided and assigned variously, as well as chanted unison. Consecutive asterisks indicate areas of overlap. Six nuns pray from the Bible of Genocide, a large old book whose text replaces the Catholic Bible with testimony from the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Their prayers follow, roughly the Office of the Hours. CAST Maria Gertrude Sister A B C D Teresa Radio/Rekeraho The nuns are Benedictine. Sisters A‐D play all Refugees, and the Interahamwe. All the nuns are Rwandan, except for Teresa, who is a white American. Radio/Rekeraho is a Rwandan man. WRITER’S NOTE Kizito is hiding. She is hiding from me. I am hiding. I am hiding from language. I don’t speak Dutch or French or Kinyarwanda. I’m not sure what a Walloon is. 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were killed from the time the plane went down to the time the RPF took the capital, and the French cooled the borders long enough for the perpetrators to flee and cholera to take over. Less poetic though more accurate than the One Million in a Hundred Days. I am ashamed of poetry but it is how I believe in anything. I hide by counting according to base‐poetry rather than rational numbers. Maria Kizito 8/29/11 THISTLE by Erik Ehn 1
THISTLE (Rose of Lima) Massacre in EI Mozote Jurisdiction of Meanguera, Morazan EI Salvador IX Anniversary: December 11, 12 and 13, 1990 Testimony: Rufina Amaya Marquez, 49 years old Testimony "Everything began when Mr. Marcos Diaz, who had the biggest shop in EI Mozote, was told in Gotera (the capitol of the department of Morazan) when he was on his way to buy some goods, that he should buy two truckloads of food instead of one, because the Army was not going to allow any more food into the town as they were planning a military operation there in the North of Morazan. The Army told him that he should gather all the townspeople together in the municipal center of the town. "I was in Isidra Claros' house on the 10th of December when the Army arrived in the afternoon and forced us out of the houses and ordered us to lay face down on the ground in front of Mr. Marco Diaz's house. They made us get up about 7 o'clock at night and took all of the money we had on us as well as all our jewelry, and they sent us back inside the houses. They told us not even to stick our noses out because if we did, they would shoot us. No one went out, not even to take care of our physical necessities. "We awakened in the houses on the 11th. At 5 in the morning they took us out of our homes and made us line up in the plaza, one line of men, one of women and one of children. At 7 in the morning a helicopter arrived and so they made us all go back inside the house of Alfredo Marquez, but the men they separated from us and put them inside the church. After this, the soldiers came in and began threatening us with their knives and rifles, telling us that they were going to let the men go, but that we had to tell them where we kept the arms first. We told them that we were unarmed. They then went to where the men were being held, tied them up, blindfolded them, and stood on top of them beating them. After this, they took them out in pairs and killed them. "All of this I saw through a little hole in the window of the house where we women were being held. Some of the men were taken first to their homes and were ordered to turn over all the money they had, but they too were brought back and killed and their bodies thrown in the convent of the church. "After this the soldiers arrived where we women were and they took out all the young girls that were there; their mothers were held back, crying and screaming for them to leave the girls alone. But the soldiers just kicked them and punched them with their rifles, and the poor ladies just stayed there crying for their daughters. Some women, elderly and blind, were crying and screaming to be set free; the soldiers didn't want to deal with them and so they took them out and they never returned. "Later they continued taking people out in groups, and evidently were killing them because we could hear the shots. At 5 in the afternoon of this day the 11th, they took out a group of 22 women where I was being held, and brought them out in front of the house of Israel Marquez. As we arrived at the pila and the front door of Thistle 2/20/10 2
the house, you could see how the blood was running. I felt very anxious, because I knew that they were going to kill me and I had four children that I had to leave behind when they divided us into groups of women, children and men. Well, upon seeing this river of blood, the women began to cry and scream. "I, as I remembered my children ‐ Christino Amaya Claros of 9 years, Maria Dolores Amaya Claros of 5 years, Martha Liliam Amaya Claros of 3 years and Maria Isabel Amaya Claros of 8 months ‐ I fell to my knees and prayed and begged God to save me from death or to pardon the sins that I had committed. At that moment I crawled to a nearby apple tree and pulled down one of the branches in order to hide myself, but the soldiers were still there in front and on all sides of the house. From there I could see when they rounded up all the women again and put them into the house, one of them carrying a small child in her arms. They brought them into the house and killed them. They continued killing them in this way, group by group. When they were bringing forward the group of women that I had been in, I felt the desire to give myself up and let them kill me. But at the same time I remembered that God had already saved me because they hadn't seen me. "The soldiers them commented, 'OK, we've finished with he old women and men, now only the children are left.' "At about 7 o'clock at night a soldier arrived to tell them to set the house on fire, and so they did. You could then hear that there was a child crying out from the flames as the house was burning. One soldier told the other to shoot the child so that it would stop crying. A group of soldiers then sat down in front of where I was hiding and were saying: 'Now only the children are left, I don't know what we should do with them.' Another said to him, 'Yeah, but the colonel said that we weren't to leave anyone alive, and we are fulfilling an order because this is a scorched earth operation.' "After this a few of the soldiers retreated, but several groups of them stayed and there were others in all of the dead end streets. You could hear some of the children screaming and crying, but you couldn't hear any shots because they were killing them with knives. The soldiers that stayed were commenting that they were already killing the children with knives and strangling them. "I thought about leaving but I was afraid they might see me. Then, the light from the burning house was attracting some animals, dogs and calves, and sparks were falling on me because the house almost completely burned down. Around 12 at night I took advantage of the fact that these animals had arrived to play in the light of the fire, and so I sneaked out, crawling on my hands and knees between the legs of the calves, grabbing my dress and my hair so that they wouldn't notice that I was a person. I finally arrived at a fence and went through, and at this point they couldn't see me, and I fell on my knees crying and praying, I felt so bewildered and confused. I then continued crawling through the bushes so that they wouldn't see me, and I arrived at a small clearing with houses called La Chumpa. As I went crawling through some cactus plants, some soldiers saw me and started shooting at me like crazy. But they didn't get me, and I could hear them saying, 'Look there's a woman over there' ... 'No, there's nothing there' ... 'Yeah, there is, there she goes' ... 'No way, the dead are scaring you, there's nothing over there.' Thistle 2/20/10 3
"And so they got scared and went running. I had stayed down with my face against the ground covering myself with some cactus plants, and I didn't walk around much because I was afraid to go any further down the hill. I woke up on the 12th. On this day I could hear the screams of the little girls on the hills who were saying, 'Don't kill me, ay, don't kill me.' They were raping and killing them. "Among these cactus plants I stayed the whole day. At about 6 in the evening I went crawling face down in the cactus plants because if I stood up they would see me. When I arrived down the hill in a small village called EI Jocote, I didn't even have my dress on anymore, it got completely ripped off while I was crawling in the bush, my arms and my stomach were all bloody from so much crawling. I arrived at the house where my father lived but there was no one there because they had fled. I looked for some clothes and found some of my father's pants and a sweater and put them on. "During the day I stayed in he bush and at night I slept in the little house owned by Andres Chicas. After 8 days of this, on the 17th, the wife of Andres arrived while I was there. She was with some girls and they were bringing corn. They found me there and told me that we should go to some caves where they were hiding and so I went off with them. We were fleeing together for quite some time, until the time when I went to the Colomoncagua refugee camp in Honduras. Today I live in Segundo Montes City." A: OPEN (A Girl, a red brick, a radio. The radio's a portable, it sits on the brick; the Girl is a Tulsa Junior College student. She has trouble getting a station ‐ she fiddles with the dial, then the antenna; she finally changes the relationship of her body to the box. She moves closer, then further away, her arms out, then by her side. Her movements become a dance. Sounds drift. Recorded sound falls to a live, stylized song that represents the crosscurrents of signals.) RADIO A kind of place that ‐ Ago ‐ Early morning ‐ My baby ‐ For the rest ‐ My love Treating me like ‐ My heart‐ (A woman in the clothes of a Salvadoran agricultural worker appears behind a desk. She wears headphones and speaks into a mic; she is broadcasting. The Girl doesn't see the woman yet ‐ only hears her.) BROADCASTER You found me. GIRL Says who? Thistle 2/20/10 4
BROADCASTER Radio Venceremos out of Morazan in EI Salvador, 1982 GIRL Now isn't then. BROADCASTER It's through you. GIRL You're too far away. BROADCASTER Your heart's a crystal Through which ghost radio focuses Stay still We will come through you Stay still until we tune Then move again Move (The signal is clear. The Girl turns and sees the Broadcaster.) GIRL You come from – BROADCASTER Radio signal never goes. The guerrillas in EI Salvador ran a mobile radio station out of caves and tunnels years ago. The signals drift and bounce forever between the stars. GIRL Why 1982? BROADCASTER A record is skipping. It's stuck there. (A recording.) RUFINA "Everything began when Mr. Marcos Diaz, who had the biggest shop in EI Mozote –" (A skip and this repeats several times.) GIRL What begins? Thistle 2/20/10 5
BROADCASTER This is the sworn testimony of Sister Rufina Amaya Marquez regarding the massacre of 1,100 men women and children in the Thistle, Morazan Province, El Salvador; the killing takes place over three days: December 11, 12 and 13, 1981. This is testimony, child. GIRL How did you find me in Oklahoma? BROADCASTER You found me. The way you moved, you moved right to me. (Singing.) Your heart is a crystal Lanced by our signal Neither of us has a choice in this GIRL (Speaking.) Get the record to stop skipping. BROADCASTER Then you will hear her whole story. GIRL How do we keep it from skipping? BROADCASTER You're listening. Your attention is the bump that unsticks it. (Singing.) EI Mozote, the Thistle, is a town in Morazan Where a thousand people were slain A woman, Rufina, testifies, solo None of the others remain Radio lances your heart We start Radio lances your heart We start B: FOURTEEN STATIONS (1) Everything Begins (Diaz walks down a road; no sound but a wooden clapping. Diaz is stopped by a man who holds him by the shoulders and whispers into his ear. Silence and a freeze at the gesture of the whisper.) Thistle 2/20/10 6
BROADCASTER Two sentences: (The Broadcaster reaches out to start a record ‐ her arm instead of a record player arm; her hand over the spinning vinyl activates sound. Rufina comes up behind her, puts her hand over the Broadcaster's, and co‐narrates. The Broadcaster trails off. Music begins with the speech; Diaz and the Official move. Townspeople set out chairs.) BROADCASTER, RUFINA Everything began when Mr. Marcos Diaz, who had the biggest shop in EI Mozote, was told in Gotera when he was on his way to buy some goods, that he should buy two truckloads of food instead of one, because the army was not going to allow any more food in the town as they were planning a military operation there in the north of Morazan. The army told him that he should gather all the townspeople together in the center of EI Mozote. (Music and speech stop together. Everyone sits as in a game of musical chairs. No chair for the Girl) GIRL (Recognizing the woman with the Broadcaster.) That woman is Rufina Amaya. Where will she sit? I'll get her a chair. (She slowly turns away and is fixed in a gesture of reaching.) (2) I Was BROADCASTER Radio Venceremos. "I was." (Rufina alone in a chair. She joins in on the underlined phrases.) I was in Isidoro Claros' house on the 10th of December when the Army arrived in the afternoon and forced us out of the house and ordered us to lie face down on the ground in front of Mr. Diaz's house. (Rufina stands; her chair is handed away by an Army Officer. Rufina is joined by three Townspeople. They lie down three times in three different ways. One: Rufina speaks and they go to the ground.) RUFINA I was, then lay face down. (They stand back up.) I was in ‐ (Two: they drop as if thrown down; they stand back up.) I was‐ (Three: they lie down slowly, as if shot through the back and falling through water.) Thistle 2/20/10 7
BROADCASTER They made us get up about seven o'clock at night and took all of our money, jewelry, sent us back inside the houses. Not to come out or they would shoot us. No one did, not even to take care of physical necessities. (They each in turn get up and leave, separately, some stiff jointed, unsure whether they should go or stay. The Girl comes forward and takes a handful of dirt.) GIRL I will keep a handful of dirt From before anything happens here My heart is radio crystal In my heart is the thistle In my pocket a fist of dirt From before anything happens (3) We Awakened (In the dark.) BROADCASTER We awakened, those of us who could sleep at all, we awakened early. The cows and goats unmilked too long. They complained as long as they could then stood low‐
headed, mask faced, watching. (Light, and the Girl has a cow mask on. The Broadcaster comes out from behind the table, joining the Townspeople.) GIRL They woke up in the houses on the 11th. At five they took them out and lined them up, separate lines for the men, the women, and the children. (The Townspeople dance, breaking off and recombining: six breaks to four and two, five and one, six individuals, three and three, and finally three pairs of two ... One pair stands as Men, with hands bound behind their backs, one pair stands as Women, with hands bound in front, and one pair stands as Children ‐ hands empty and heads down.) Women and children then crowded together into the one house, men to the church. (The Women and Children gather in a tight cluster, and the men move down stage. The Girl, in her mask, listens closely to the group of women and children, as if through a wall.) The soldiers say: "We will let the men go, but you have to tell us where you keep the arms." WOMEN AND CHILDREN (Simply.) We‐are‐un ‐armed. (The Men are blindfolded. Fingers drawn across one Man's throat.) GIRL The tendons in their necks part with the sound of sawed guitar strings. The awful chord is gorgeous, played in a martyr's key. Thistle 2/20/10 8
(She takes off her mask.) For thinking so prettily, I will pay. (4) All of This I Saw (The Broadcaster, behind her table, reads from a document.) BROADCASTER All of this I saw through a little hole in the window of the house where the women were being held. (Rufina stands apart from a bound Man. The Man tries to turn his face to hers, can't. Tries to free his arms, can't. Tries to cry out, can't.] RUFINA All of this I saw – GIRL All of this I heard through ghost radio Venceremos pirating the TJC band. (Rufina and the Man dance. The Man takes a weaker part; Rufina saves him from the floor.) GIRL AND BROADCASTER All of this I saw Animals unmilked and starving Dancing in the famine moon Lovers and brothers cut down too soon All of this I saw through a hole All of this I saw I saw more when the Sun rose, as it will (as it will) This is happening still I saw, I saw through a hole (The Girl is forced to wear a Soldier's coat; she is handed a bayonet. She is pushed into the narrative against her will. She moves towards the Man as he dances with Rufina.) BROADCASTER All of this. Some of the men were taken first to their houses and – GIRL No. No. BROADCASTER Were ordered to turn over all the money they had, but they too were brought back and – Thistle 2/20/10 9
GIRL No. BROADCASTER And killed, their bodies thrown into the convent of the church. GIRL (Her bayonet at the Man's throat.) No. RUFINA This happens. This is the sound. (She cuts the throat in silence; the Man's exhalation is the only sound. The Girl reels away and stares at what she has done.) RUFINA, THE GIRL A hole. (5) After This (Twilight. The Girl ‐ dressed as herself again ‐ tunes the radio with her body. The sense of a new section. The Broadcaster reads at her table, and the Girl reads over her shoulder.) BROADCASTER "After This." After this the soldiers came to where we women were. GIRL The young women. The old women. BROADCASTER The young women, exact in their fright; the old women superb at keening. GIRL Removed. (Rufina is standing on a chair. She releases an imaginary object from her right hand ‐ the girls; her left hand tightens to a clutch around nothing ‐ the Old Women.) BROADCASTER The women between youth and age, between sitting and standing, between life and death, remained. RUFINA Those taken, never returned. (6) Later They Continued Thistle 2/20/10 10
(Rufina, the Girl and the Broadcaster dance together; gracefully pass blood between them.) RUFINA (Recorded.) At five in the afternoon on this day, the 11th, they took a group of 22 of us women. (A burst of static. the dancers fall out of sync. They adjust their postures to receive signal; static subsides; they continue. A Rat enters and takes the thread‐end of the blood in its mouth; he pulls it away, slowly.) Outside you could see how the blood was running. (The Women hide their hands in each others' bodies. Their mouths by each others' ears, they whisper, audibly.) RUFINA, THE GIRL, BROADCASTER Upon seeing this river of blood, the women began to cry and scream. (This sentence is repeated, volume increasing to no more than a conversational level, as the lights fade.) (7) I as I Remembered (The Broadcaster has her hand over the mic. Children sit apart, cross‐legged, playing an elaborate concentration game; we don't hear their hands clap ‐ a wooden clack instead. Rufina walks a few steps away from the Children, stops to look back, drops to her knees to pray and then covers herself, hiding on the ground. The Girl tries to hide with her ‐ tries to offer comfort. Rufina pushes her away, gently, authoritatively. Rufina rises and repeats her cycle of motions ‐ walking, praying, hiding. The Girl tries to enter the circle of children, but can't.) RUFINA I as I remembered my children – CHILDREN Christino Amaya Claros, 9 Maria Dolores Amaya Claros, 5 Martha Liliam Amaya Claros, 3 Maria Isabel Amaya Claros, 8 months RUFINA I fell to my knees and prayed Forgiveness for the sins I've made I pulled down the branch of an apple tree And begged my lord to save me (Rhythm stops abruptly with the last line of the lyric.) Thistle 2/20/10 11
GIRL The soldiers were. I was. The soldiers were on all sides. They killed the women in groups. (A smiling Mother appears stage right. She encourages Rufina as if she were a baby.) MOTHER Come here. Come here, baby. Don't hold on ‐ you can walk. (Rufina starts to crawl towards her.) RUFINA When they were bringing forward the group of women I had been in, I felt the desire to give myself up and let them kill me. MOTHER Come on. (The Children in the circle begin to crawl too.) RUFINA But at the same time I remembered that God had already saved me because they hadn't seen me. (All crawl now as if they are grown women in distress. Some collapse; Rufina remains up, one hand extended to the Mother. The Mother leaves, impersonally. Rufina quickly hides herself.) (8) The Soldiers Then Commented (Light. Four Soldiers, facing forward, a staggered line. They dance in a round. One initiates a sequence of moves suggesting heavy manual labor ‐ the lifting and laying down of burdens. The Girl is one of the Soldiers; she can't complete all the repetitions. She falls, exhausted. When the round is finished, the Broadcaster reads.) BROADCASTER The soldiers then commented: "OK, we've finished with the old women and men, now only the children are left." (9) At About 7 O'clock at Night TWO SOLDIERS Set that house on fire. RUFINA Thin green sap expands at the rate of kerosene. (Rufina, trying to hide in the middle of the floor, is found by fire. All around her, soldiers; they don't see her. The Broadcaster holds her hand over the Girl's mouth; the Girl whimpers like expanding sap.) Thistle 2/20/10 12
No. The voice of one of the children. I don't know this child. RUFINA AND BROADCASTER Please. BROADCASTER Please: don't make Rufina move. (The Girl bites the Broadcaster's hand; the Broadcaster sucks the wound.) GIRL (Whispering audibly.) Rufina. RUFINA Do I know this child? SOLDIERS AND GIRL (Whispering.) Mama. RUFINA I don't know – GIRL She knows. (The Girl approaches Rufina, slowly.) BROADCASTER She can't move. RUFINA Voice walking towards me with the solidity of a horse. Roan. Coat of fire. A saint, all bone, insane on Voice's back, armed, prepared to identify ‐ me. Globe‐eyed horse ‐ foam lung'd, from fire, sniffs the ground. Twenty five percent of Apocalypse walks up on me from the left saying "mama." GIRL Rufina. Rufina. (She's almost there. The Soldiers sit in a circle around Rufina, facing out. The Girl crouches in shadow, attempting to connect with Rufina.) SOLDIER ONE Only children left – SOLDIER TWO In the last house. Thistle 2/20/10 13
SOLDIER THREE What should we do? SOLDIER TWO Some of them are really cute. (Each produces a small toy ‐ an orange, plastic horse. They set the horses down.) SOLDIER THREE It would be a shame to kill them. (Slow, highly controlled tumbles around the toys, weight on hands. They are contemplating. Rufina repeats, rapidly and without voice: "My children! My children!" We hear her dry mouth click.) BROADCASTER (Into mic.) Rufina in the fire's light, buried in cold worm soil, spoke with breath contracted. My children! Words shrinking to ice. SOLDIER ONE Yeah, but the Colonel said we weren't to leave – SOLDIER TWO Anyone alive. SOLDIER THREE Operativo tierra arrasada. GIRL Scorched Earth Operation. BROADCASTER The apple tree did not catch fire because Rufina was in a world of ice. RUFINA It took two men to pull the baby from me. BROADCASTER One corpse found with a plastic horse strangely perfect in the pocket of the degrading pants. GIRL She scooped a hole ‐ in which ‐ to catch ‐ her sobbing. (10) After This the Soldiers (The Broadcaster, the Girl and Rufina pass silence between them.) Thistle 2/20/10 14
RUFINA After this some soldiers retreated, but the elite continued working in the dark. Because I was so near, and so still, I could hear their moves through the roots of the tree. My hands were over my ears to shut out the screams, the roots became my fingers and I heard anyway. No shots. They were killing them with knives. We will dress ourselves in silence for a new ceremony. We will clothe ourselves with silence for a marriage to this place. (11) I Thought about Leaving (Rufina, so tired, lies alone, red silk gathered around her as a blanket.) RUFINA ... But I was afraid they might see me. Sparks flew down on me from the last house burning. (The Girl appears on a ladder. She sprinkles red sparks over Rufina. A dog, a cow and a goat appear, singing. They dance.) ANIMALS Fascinated by the light The animals come to play Dogs and cows and goats Fascinated by the light Who suckles the udders to relieve them? The animals nurse each other They are drunk on strange milk The animals suckle each other Fascinated by the light The killing is nearly over The light is fascinating Skeletal pup and calf and kid The refugee escapes In their play (The Animals begin to move in concert. They head off, stage left. Rufina begins to mirror their actions. The Girl comes down from the ladder and tries to mirror as well, but Rufina pushes her back.) RUFINA Stay. (The Girl watches. The Animals leave. Rufina prays.) BROADCASTER The animals, delirious with hunger and lightheaded in the glow and myrrh of the crematory, gave me cover. I pretended I was a dog, and moved by their flanks. Thistle 2/20/10 15
Through the fence of midnight and onto the side of the next day, eternal. I prayed and prayed. (A Soldier enters and lies between Rufina and the Girl. He levels a rifle at Rufina. The Girl starts to rise.) RUFINA AND BROADCASTER Stay. (The Girl stays.) SOLDIER I see something over there. Nothing? Yes, there she is. (Wooden gunshots.) GIRL AND BROADCASTER She is the Witch of EI Mozote, la llarona! The bullets turn to water. (12) And So They Got Scared BROADCASTER And so they got scared and went running. I ran the other way. I awoke the next day, on the 12th of December, and ran again. (Sun. A beautiful, clear day. Rufina and the Girl run together in a circuit around the stage.) RUFINA Birdsong. (And this is heard. A Bird appears on a high branch. Rufina and the Girl stop abruptly, to listen.) BIRD Running by a hill called La Cruz Rufina heard the girls It had taken this many days For the soldiers to finish "Ay, don't kill me, don't kill me, ay ay" They resisted like birds in their hands As birds they were murdered As girls, raped The song stayed high in the trees One girl sang through the ordeal, a simple song, a song of her town. A song they couldn't take from her. They shot her in the chest and the song still came. They had to put the metal of a knife's blade between her heart and mouth. Thistle 2/20/10 16
RUFINA, GIRL, BIRD The stars are invisible In all this sunlight But I know they are there They are nails Invisible nails Hammering finity My carpenter builds a day They are nails A structure of innocence Thorned to the sky Boards joined at the pain He and I La Cruz in the sky He and I (13) Among These Cactus Plants (A breath; the sense of a new section. The Girl draws water from a well. Rufina pulls herself forward.) BROADCASTER Among these cactus plants I stayed the whole day. Went crawling. (A discovery.) My dress is ripped! CHORUS Among these cactus plants, during the day What happened here? What happened here? The thorn and the thistle along the way What happened here? What happened here? The events are gone, the witness lives on The roses know all that there is to say (The Girl catches up with Rufina and washes her feet, gets her dressed.) BROADCASTER I arrived at the house where my father lived but there was no one there because they had fled. I looked for some clothes and found some of my father's pants and a sweater and put them on. (14) During the Day BROADCASTER Last one: "During the Day." (The Girl and one or two others are making low altars out of bricks and plates. The only light on stage comes from candles at the shrines. Candles appear from elsewhere in a dark, danced procession.) Thistle 2/20/10 17
CHORUS Among these cactus plants, during the day Filled with bones, filled with bones I walk among them in every direction How dry they are, how dry they are My words make skin, put spirit in Over the desert, the breath of resurrection We live again Bones and skin Spirit kisses Resurrection in We live again We live again The land is ours Oh my people RUFINA (Speaking.) During the day I stayed in the bush At night I slept In the house of Andres Chicas Girls brought corn We lived in caves. We fled together. Today I live in Segundo Montes City. C: CLOSE (The sound of a helicopter.) GIRL Where did she go? BROADCASTER Where she lives. GIRL Your signal is weak. BROADCASTER We're done. GIRL What else? Thistle 2/20/10 18
BROADCASTER The bullet casings were all stamped "U.S. Army." You could hold them in your hand. The Atlacatl Battalion was American trained. You bought the massacre. GIRL What is the helicopter for? BROADCASTER Traffic report. Come in, come in. The Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, Monterossa, was a vain man. He loved battle trophies. We allowed him to seize our transmitter once. When he went up in his helicopter to cart it home, we pressed a button – (An explosion.) The wreckage of his machine is kept as a holy shrine where it fell from the sky that day. GIRL Where will you go? BROADCASTER Our station exploded into the static between stations. We are the fourteen stations of the cross. The fourteen stations of Rufina Amaya's testimony; fourteen. (A group enters and enacts a set of fourteen gestures, one per each of the fourteen previous scenes. The Girl is a full participant.) CHORUS My heart is radio crystal In my heart is the Thistle (Old men and women bring roses to sites very particular to them; they leave pictures and tokes as well. They pray.) GIRL Who are you? BROADCASTER I am Rose. St. Rose of Lima. You have seen me before and you will see me again. I have endured every thorn. I live. I live in station Venceremos, the stations of the cross, my love crucified on static, stretched over the ice of all your skies. The crown of radio light is a crown of thorns. GIRL This was a Protestant region. The killings were political, not religious. Why‐ BROADCASTER The story must be told by means of every truth there is. Radio plays through you, my one. You tell. Thistle 2/20/10 19
GIRL When they were killing the children, they threw the loud ones down a well. The children filled a deep well. The children are in the aquifer. Although you cannot hear them, their blood comes up roses; the blood of 75,000 martyrs rises, every weed a rose. I awake with a fist's worth of dirt from EI Mozote in my pocket, now bright red. (She pulls dirt from her pocket and scatters it.) CHORUS Among these roses, during the day The martyrs rise from the clay Among these roses, through the night Martyred bones rattle, combine Among these roses, thorns of memory Add my blood to theirs, this ground is holy Who is to say What happened here? For the dead a rose The dead arose To say this is what happened here For the dead a rose The dead arose To say this is what happened here The End Thistle 2/20/10 DRUNK STILL DRINKING by Erik Ehn 1
DRUNK, STILL DRINKING – Part One (Narrated by Mazout. The Child Soldier plays Greta and Quality.) Prologue MAZOUT Apple and honey. 10,000. Lelu. What is on the day of this? On this day? LELU I remember something like this. Back when my body was useable, back when I was a tree unwinding. First I heard him on the radio until radio was all I heard; then I was with him. SOLAMENTE The dogs, their mouths, tender, bleed lightly against my hands as I stroke their snouts. (Back, over her shoulder, to Peter.) “I’ll be in soon, I’ll be in soon.” They relax and make volume in their ribs, release sighs against the hairs on my arms. We are alive. “Soon!” MAZOUT (As Lelu.) “I’ll take these shoes. They look like cultured hands on my body when it’s slippery.” Then she walks in a certain direction, and doesn’t stop walking. She eats and makes love while walking. LELU (Remembering making love.) Will you walk with me? Will you walk? CHILD SOLDIER He returns from the butchers in the small village… He ties a pig’s cut dick into her mouth. LELU J’ai pas envie de faire ma page. J’ai envie daller me promener. CHILD SOLDIER Lelu and So go to Paris to buy a pair of shoes. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 2
LELU J’ai envie de manger tous les gateaux. J’ai envie de tirer la queue du chat, Et de couper cell de l’écureuil. CHILD SOLDIER Leluliah and Solamente go to Paris to buy a pair of shoes. LELU, SOLAMENTE J’ai envie de gronder tout le monde! J’ai envie de mettre Maman en penitence SOLAMENTE Promettez‐moi, Bébé, de travailler? Voulez‐vous me demande pardon? One: Batter MAZOUT In luck rut – the weeds by the lot where the church dips the ladle – Lelu works the Episcopal kitchen, Oklahoma City, soup on Thursdays and pancakes, Sunday breakfast. The nearest synagogue is a car away; she’s on a no‐gear bike, coaster brakes, rotary bell, slapping basket. LELU High, high, high. MAZOUT She cuts the shortening into the flower with the back of a fork. Coffee urn smokestacks caffeinate the sun. Fall’s morning opals the panes. The batter winding, is a clock. 210 people served on a Sunday. LELU (To unseen other: a new worker.) To see my sister. See Quality up at Mabel Basset today. MAZOUT Each pancake is a letter from Solamente up and over a couple of states. She flips them, she serves them, she sugars them, she eats them. LELU (To the co‐worker; she’s training her.) There are canned strawberries thawing on the counter. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 3
MAZOUT She rides a bike with uneven pedals. She gets to the kitchen before sunup. She sweeps the sidewalks. She helps the man asleep in the doorway to use the bathroom. She bleaches the sidewalk. LELU We let the butter get soft in the dishes. We take the orders at the table. There is no line. These are our guests. (Sola and Lelu take a break in the sun; apples, honey.) MAZOUT They, separate states, eat apple slices dipped in honey. Same bee. They are queens. LELU Shouldn’t have to tell a lie to eat. Shouldn’t have to eat. MAZOUT The smooth, the batter, the two hundred ten. They smoke and smell of tobacco when they eat. They smoke after they eat, all grace burned from sidewalks and walls by acid light. LELU (To co‐worker.) My husband is gone. And the man I prefer to my husband is gone. William, Xavier. MAZOUT Hating the smell of them. Wishing the smell of them were all of them, and were as solid as a dog, so you could kill it. LELU My sister inside her tea of sunshine‐y, bodice‐ripping parole violation. MAZOUT Quality had taken a dog, and skinned it. She forgot that she herself wasn’t the dog, and that she would live through the violence. She thought: I am ending something. (Boiling pans rattle gently.) LELU The pans on the stove are sub‐woofers, and they play a song you heard when you had your first boyfriend. It has been sixteen years since I made love. MAZOUT When she gets big and fat her mind is a moon mind, wishful, and she breathes moon mountain, barely living. When she gets small she could kill her sister. Small now, Lelu – Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 4
Two: Steel Wool MAZOUT She goes to a plaza so empty the sun loses its place reading it and: crazy shadows cast. In the small plaza; a small box, size of a hummingbird house. Her older sister is inside it. (Lelu visits her sister Quality at the Mabel Basset jail, Oklahoma City. The Child Soldier is Quality’s voice – we don’t see Quality.) LELU How so far – QUALITY What day? What day is this? LELU I’ll tell you what – QUALITY What? What will you tell me for the one millionth time? LELU That it’s far enough. And maybe I go somewhere – QUALITY You don’t though. You have, but you don’t. LELU Xavier. QUALITY He’s got kids. LELU Not that he talks about. QUALITY The dead heat of encumbrance. He’s looking for two or three ways to run out of himself before the bills come in. LELU Xavier was a fireman. Now he is a fireman who lives in Maine. Let the fossil record show. Species persists, though the ground shifts. QUALITY Why don’t you just go home? Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 5
LELU Your face is a map of health. QUALITY Quit looking – LELU Bad health. If I rode your face, if I went the north of it, I’d use left for right, and go reverse‐way down ramps. MAZOUT Her older and larger sister is in a small place. LELU You can change it by practicing a habit of not doing it. It’s a null thing, but after a while... MAZOUT Quality eats a spoonful of steel wool. LELU The arresting officer came to my house personally; he knew Xavier from the time of the first responder. He didn’t like him, but because he knew him, he gave me the word himself and told me how to get your car from impound. Sign off. MAZOUT Quality cannot find a vein in her neck. QUALITY You don’t have to be – so constant. MAZOUT Quality and her lover couldn’t get high anymore so they put government peaches in a garbage bag and left them behind the radiator to ferment them – got nowhere off that. LELU There is no remembering a sister, Quality, because a sister is all there ever was. Let me borrow your car, Quality. Sign off. Null. MAZOUT She sweeps her sister’s basement apartment; she bleaches it. She buys 180 yards of concrete and seals it shut. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 6
Three: Shut Up, Dogs (Lelu takes her imprisoned sister’s car from impound, to visit Solamente, an old friend of Lelu’s. Lelu speaks to herself before Solamente appears.) LELU I will not know my place, sister. (Solamente.) It’s me, So. It’s me. SOLAMENTE To what do I – LELU It’s me. SOLAMENTE I know, I’m – LELU I’ll sit you down. I’ll tell you. Show me where to sit you down. SOLAMENTE Here. LELU I don’t know any other way to tell you. (Barking heard from down the road.) SOLAMENTE He can’t shut up those dogs. He won’t shut up those dogs. LELU You were there when the divorce was peeled out of the snail shell and the butterfly bandage was put across the eyebrow of the big smirk. Me and Willie went together like the two parts of an irony: just crap, that’s all it was. And now, So, I’d like for you to have a better thought in your head than the terrarium we dumped in the forest, all those creatures up to the hawks; better than that, than the broken things we had left when we thought we had gotten rid of all the broken things, but still needed some things. MAZOUT The pancake paste is stalled under her fingernails. She will find a brief rope of it in her hair when she undresses for the shower. Xavier, the fireman, would help at the pancake breakfasts. Her hands would be clean from showers when she pushed them up his raised arms like lifting the shirt of age and death from his possible, full‐sugar flesh. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 7
LELU Well, are you in or are you out? SOLAMENTE You’ll wake my mother up. LELU She can’t hear. SOLAMENTE Hears more than you think. CHILD SOLDIER (Greta, narrating herself, then herself.) This first act is a set of conversations badly recorded by an old woman who is out of her mind. She loves Lelu more than her own daughter; because Lelu wasn’t a daughter; because there is no way to remember a daughter – having had her being a radiation quarantine, a Congolese strip‐mine visible to astronauts. There is nothing in a daughter but daughter, daughter, daughter, before and after her, so she is forgotten. I forget Solamente. I love Hallie, love Lelu. LELU (Making a kind of tea of her mind.) Let’s go, let’s go you’re made of tea Let’s go, let’s go, if you love me SOLAMENTE He can’t shut up those dogs. He never shuts up those dogs. LELU Are you in or are you out? SOLAMENTE I’ll tell you what: I won’t be all that happy. MAZOUT Lelu drives her sister’s car to Maine; she picks up her friend So along the way; they drive to Maine. (In the car. On the Interstate. Greta, from her bedroom window.) CHILD SOLDIER I am peaches. In syrup. In a bag. A bad idea. Forming slowly. Tapped too quickly. An idea that makes you sick. Look at me. I love Lelu because Lelu can leave me. Solamente, never can, never. (Lelu and Solamente arrive in Maine. They walk around inside it.) Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 8
LELU Hm. Small state. SOLAMENTE Was he here? He didn’t really move to Maine. LELU He was here until the car we bought together went liquid. We’ll sleep in a motel, then it’s time to go. SOLAMENTE You’re safe as long as you don’t get ahead of me, Lelu. Pete’s slow and Mama’s voice is failing. (At the motel. Solamente has a book in bed. Lelu doesn’t.) MAZOUT He is in the Shakespeare rafters of Lelu’s brain all day. SOLAMENTE How few people have ever read this book? We two. Greta and me. LELU Him, Willie, I always felt like I was lifting wet rose petals off his shoulders with my teeth, catching him at the peak of sweetness just as he was cooling down from the drums. The other him, Xavier: it was more not seeing anything at night, but hearing the waves blow or the leaves break, and there’s time. CHILD SOLDIER Pulling a white hair from the pages of a book. Greta’s eyes go across pages like a white, blown hair. MAZOUT So speaks to a damaged dog in damage‐language. (Lelu and Solamente drift off to sleep in the long and narrow motel bed.) Four: Chocolate MAZOUT She sells Quality’s car when Xavier isn’t there and then “let’s go to Europe.” SOLAMENTE I thought you wanted to see Xavier. LELU He’s over there. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 9
SOLAMENTE You know that? LELU They said. SOLAMENTE Who? LELU He’s in Europe. Europe: now there’s one experimental all‐day sucker. SOLAMENTE We’re at the airport, honey. Very sober. Show the man your passport. MAZOUT She drove from Oklahoma City to Maine in the car she stole from her sister. CHILD SOLDIER What I heard. What I wished for her. LELU (Describing the flight.) The sun will not move. The sun keeps itself, like a child. The width of the ocean. Until the child comes to self‐consciousness, and the dark falls. MAZOUT She met her friend Sola on the way. They took a train and a bus to the airport. They went to Paris. To buy shoes. You cannot have a funeral without shoes. You cannot love on your own terms without a proper pair of shoes. “We’ll walk right up to him…” (Lelu and Solamente are nervous fliers. They pray to a bag of chocolate to calm down.) LELU Here: this small SOLAMENTE Here: this small LELU Bag of chocolate SOLAMENTE Bag of Chocolate Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 10
LELU To last an ocean SOLAMENTE To last an ocean. MAZOUT Both in this small place, fearful over chocolate, sweet changing to bitter in the dry mouth. LELU, SOLAMENTE God’s clod and every living thing He sustains in liquid space. Who can climb his mountain? Who knows his place? Wash your hand and pinch pink your heart – Save room for desert, it’s the better part. MAZOUT A bag full of chocolate, swelling feet, waiting for Paris to drop – suspended though they were, they saw the authority of their adventure as vertical above them. Flying is a pylon driving them into hell. LELU Coffee. Chocolate. Wish I was high, high, high. SOLAMENTE Hey – You know the patois? LELU I will aim my foot: honey into the mouth of a beautiful boy. SOLAMENTE Shoes are boys? LELU They are my beautiful, beautiful boys. My Myrmidons. They are boys the way a hot bathtub is, when you stick your foot into it, very – slowly. SOLAMENTE Willie. Good man. His hips were wide open. LELU I want a pair of shoes. I have a little money, for a little while. I have a small bag of chocolate. My life has never been so different – from itself. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 11
MAZOUT Dialogue breaks. Conversation churned in jet engines. It will be winter soon. Quality sends never a letter from county. 210, dog smoke, killable, the food breaking to sugars, the sugars feeding menthol to the veins, the veins shitting benzene, the lungs in freezing failure. The lover’s fire drowns breathing on dreaming hills. LELU Small whiskey puts my fear in Egypt underground. (They drift off to sleep on the plane.) MAZOUT Sweat. Diabetic blur. LELU He rocked these hips side to side in his hands. MAZOUT Calabash cradle. LELU I crushed the nard behind my ears for him and ran sweat down my dresses. There are very few things I need to have; I need to keep this thing going. CHILD SOLDIER (Describing the travel on and on.) A boat to the bus to the plane to the hot air balloon to the tunnel to the sled to the dormouse to the rickshaw to the right of way at the cow’s ford to the escalator and to the merry go round to the bicameral legislature to the grease through a goose to the marble and nothing to declare. LELU In the boat on the way; I dip my hand, drink sea water – CHILD SOLDIER Salt swells her diabetic feet; the lice of the sea infect her feeling. But at the waist she is slim as a creature bred by time and habit for racing, when she comes to the pier and train and plaza, the 11,000 escapes forward. LELU There is a bell inside the river. It calls the bell inside the ocean. The bell inside the ocean calls the bell in the mountain on the other side of the world. (Arrival.) MAZOUT Lelu will turn into a heavy animal. She wanders for years. Until her mind breaks. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 12
LELU We are breaking. We are the old cloth pulling away from the shrinking patch. SOLAMENTE Why do you want me with you? LELU We shoot at each other means we know how to shoot. What we need is the same direction, and neither one ahead of the other. CHILD SOLDIER Lelu grows young and old and young again, big and little and big again. Now she is little and young. She is on a plane, on a ship, on an iceberg, on a greased pig, with her best friend, speaking the same language, and not the same language they started out with. p.s. (Projecting forward. A nightclub. Mazout sings.) MAZOUT Their eyes like death simulate dreaming I can’t keep track of what I’m doing I am a man alone, singing You see my loneliness, I am your dreaming. SOLAMENTE Is the song over? LELU I don’t know. SOLAMENTE He’s coming over here. Is he touching your drink, or is he kissing you? LELU Ça m’est égal! Justement j’ai pas faim! Justement j’aime beaucoup mieux rester tout seul! Je n’aime personne! Je suis très méchant! Méchant! méchant! méchant! MAZOUT Taking her clothes to be burned. Walking into the quarantine station. She is dressed then in a big crude sheet.
Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 13
Part Two (Narrated by the Child Soldier.) One (Lelu and Solamente stride through Europe.) LELU What river is this? SOLAMENTE It’s in the book. LELU Where’s the book? SOLAMENTE There’s something off about everything. It’s like the whole country was made for left handed people. LELU Sit down, sit. Angle the light with a licked knife; flake the pastry. (They rest in a café.) I thought he’d be here. SOLAMENTE It’s easy to get lost. Those left hand turns. LELU Sit. Stay for while. SOLAMENTE I’m running out of money. LELU It doesn’t take much. SOLAMENTE You’d have to be a mayfly. LELU Take much to spend it. (They sleep a bit, jet‐lagged. They wake together.) Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 14
SOLAMENTE The museums act like they’re in on some big secret. It’s all pictures. Any wall can have a picture on it. You could send a card. LELU I don’t think the way you do. SOLAMENTE You think exactly the way I do. LELU I’m quiet about it. Be my friend. SOLAMENTE And do what? LELU These new places, they aren’t strange. They’re just mad at you. SOLAMENTE There’s nothing I can do with a stranger’s anger. No inside jokes or blackmail. LELU Take the go‐slow way and the anger gentles up. Before too long they’re giving you proper change. SOLAMENTE I have one more day here, Lelu. Left in me. LELU Let’s walk and then we’ll sleep and then sit on the plane. (They walk.) The river lifts petals from the shoulder of the drummer. The river burns oak, blows through waves as gently as through hanging glass. Looking for Xavier with a weak turn of the head. “Have you seen this man?” No, neither have we. SOLAMENTE He is on the hills of Maine. LELU Champagne, kirsch, little whiskeys, strawberries soaked in dessert liquer. I understand the nature of our friendship in the patience of our drinking. Be persistent in this. SOLAMENTE He is using a poleax to cut trench. He is busy. He is happy; he is fine. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 15
CHILD SOLDIER Foodless and beery, close in the cold, the sky pearling, they lose their reflections in the windows, as gradually, it is more light from within the stores than from without. Then reflections return as the businesses shut down. LELU Did you get enough to eat? SOLAMENTE I don’t know. I don’t think so. Let’s go. Let’s go. LELU (Trying a door.) It’s open. SOLAMENTE I’m not hungry. LELU Doesn’t mean you can’t eat. (A dark restaurant. They sit. They are served. They don’t eat. They sleep a bit.) CHILD SOLDIER Pushing down halls, sluicing down pipes, reaching through leaves to ripeness, reaching into ovens for the crispness, straining against gravity for the arabesque that bends the nautilus to its higher dimension: they persist. And forget they are persisting. They are distracted by dollhouse coffee, and gay nips from stinging flutes. But anything will distract them; they are on vacation. They are distracted from blood by blood. (They wake.) SOLAMENTE Last day. LELU Last day. Let’s – SOLAMENTE Stay with me. LELU You are afraid to do the things you know you should. You’re afraid to be like you are. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 16
SOLAMENTE I’d die in your arms, Lelu, if I could choose a way to go. Nobody is so unafraid as you to wade into commerce, no matter the currency. But like a psychic, you may not be able to grapple your own tender – the people you need, right in front of you. (Lelu stops, stunned, at a store window. At last, the shoes.) CHILD SOLDIER Lelu, in rictus, becomes at once an advertisement. She is naked, facing sideways, imagining them on her. A naked young boy is behind her, kneeling. He cups her heels and lifts her to the height of stilettos. The title of the ad is “the blessing of the feet.” LELU I like these. CHILD SOLDIER Integument. Nerve. The system of a sylph’s knee. The complexity of a well‐made espresso. These are shoes to love. LELU Shoes that took fourteen years to make, beans that took fourteen years to roast and dripped down like a stalactite of gold in the pleasure caves of a Babylonian king. Coffee or shoes as good as that. SOLAMENTE They are – they are – good shoes. LELU Do you – are you getting a pair? (Lelu tries them on.) CHILD SOLDIER As if she had been mummified in crap for six thousand years and it all fell away, she put the shoes on and turned to look at her heel. LELU “You’ll wear them, Madam?” I very well will wear them, sir. I will wear them very well. SOLAMENTE Of what are they made? LELU Time and tightness. Close your eyes when you look at me. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 17
SOLAMENTE I can still see them. (Opens her eyes. Lelu walks away.) Wait. Wait for me. CHILD SOLDIER A shadow puppet Xavier in the sky. He is shadow through the paper of the snow. Two a) Spirit Enters at the Ear LELU Last night. A place! (They’re outside a nightclub.) It’s expensive and made out of wood. If it burns, maybe he’ll find us. CHILD SOLDIER Though the door is not low, we bow to the smoke to go. The lighting is so dark it smells of anise. (On the small stage, a beautiful singer. He and Lelu communicate by secret language. Lelu sways.) MAZOUT I am singing, now. How close am I to you? LELU How close is the movie to the movie screen? MAZOUT I am singing now. I am still singing. SOLAMENTE When’d it turn into a waltz? LELU This is no music for sitting down. SOLAMENTE For dancing? MAZOUT For walking towards the singer. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 18
Their eyes like death simulate dreaming I can’t keep track of what I’m doing I am a man alone, singing You see my loneliness, I am your dreaming SOLAMENTE Is the song over? LELU I don’t know. SOLAMENTE Is he touching your drink? Or is he kissing you? 2.b) And So, Goodbye LELU (To Solamente.) I’ll meet you back at the hotel. SOLAMENTE Lelu, I’m going home. Fearless. And bored. The plane. Going home. CHILD SOLDIER He sings in a language she can no longer get and doesn’t want to. She’s beyond wanting. Her will is in a fixed moment of pierced attachment. She is in the direction of her will; she does not direct it. LELU I came for a reason. SOLAMENTE You came with me. LELU You weren’t the reason. SOLAMENTE What is? LELU I don’t know. If I knew the reason I could have talked myself out of it. You could have talked me out of it. SOLAMENTE I don’t want to go back alone. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 19
LELU Why? SOLAMENTE It’s rude. LELU You mean I’m rude. SOLAMENTE Yes. LELU There are social cases where you’d laugh milk through your nose in praise of my rudeness. SOLAMENTE This case is the suitcase. Hear those flippers click. LELU (Handing currency.) This is the last paper bill I have. Take a cab. You’ll be alone and emotional in one of the world’s great cities. Just like a movie. CHILD SOLDIER So is in the subway, is in the digestion of a bear. She finds the hotel in the hour of birds and babies. LELU I can’t see. 2.c) Mazout the Friend CHILD SOLDIER Drink like sleuth music. Drink like chocolate on the stove. Walk to each other like small hands reaching ready berries from complicated bushes. MAZOUT Solamente? LELU I have no friends. MAZOUT Is that because you’re dangerous? Or just mean? Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 20
LELU It’s because I know the uses of force and most people are looking for codefendants. MAZOUT Good people have something to lose. LELU You only know to think you have something to lose if you’ve lost it already. MAZOUT Then? LELU Then it’s my turn. CHILD SOLDIER Drink at the scale of a tragic symphony. MAZOUT (He sings.) Lift your heads, O you gates; Break your doors, Glory’s coming. The Lord is strong and mighty, The Lord is mighty in battle. Lift your heads, O you gates; Break your doors for glory. Who is he, this King? He is the King of glory. Selah LELU The space in the head is opening, the rust is grinding off the brittle hinges. Night – the possibilities in Night’s blindness, move through the house. MAZOUT You talk like a toaster. LELU How’s that? MAZOUT Like making toast. Like a machine. LELU A must every morning. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 21
MAZOUT Life’s too full of appliances. I’m hands‐on. LELU If I stop talking will you love me? MAZOUT I’ll do exactly what I feel like no matter what you do. LELU No matter what? MAZOUT Is that a threat? LELU It’s toast. It’s your morning. Threats are easy. You don’t know what I’ve been doing. You won’t until you’re in jail and you’ve given me permission to steal your car. CHILD SOLDIER Homesickness, cruelty and tobacco. LELU There are better ways to say shut up, Mazout. (She kisses him.) 2.d) Love (The kiss deepens and changes.) LELU Every hand I ever had is surefire on his back. CHILD SOLDIER Moving backwards, moving forwards, moving side to side, moving while they kiss, dressing, undressing while moving, eating, drinking. LELU That hurts. (They cover hundreds of miles.) CHILD SOLDIER They fall in broken rotor through Europe, somewhere further on. Where they use dump trucks in the music and it takes forever for the internet to load. (Lelu hyperventilates. Mazout calms her.) Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 22
MAZOUT That’s all right baby. Look. Look at your hands. Look at your hands like they were somebody else’s. They’re full of life. They’re the full hands of a living person. Hands that can bind and hands that can loose. Put your hands on your knees. Put your hands on your face. You’re everywhere with you. You’re with me. LELU Even standing still I feel like I’m ice skating. MAZOUT There you go. LELU I mean my feet are not on the ground. CHILD SOLDIER There is something she can’t quite hear – not sure if it was what she is knocking over, or trouble, far off. Music made by small machines. LELU What was that? CHILD SOLDIER The singing: grinding of teeth. Her mouth too is a small machine and her teeth are loose. MAZOUT Float. CHILD SOLDIER Ding, ding, ding! Peut‐être que, s’il ne m’eût mutilée, Rien n’aurait jamais change Dans cette demeure. Peut‐être qu’aucun n’y fût jamais mort… Si j’avais pu continuer de soner, Toutes pareilles les unes aux autres, Les heures! Ah! Laissez‐moi cacher ma honte et ma douleur Le nez contre le mur! LELU I used to be two or more of me. I used to be all of me. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 23
Three a) Shut Up Dogs (Solamente comes home.) CHILD SOLDIER She’s an administrator at the school. SOLAMENTE Peter, are you home? How are you walking, Peter? How is the puppet show, the one about the bird and the heart and the mountains made of glass? Peter, how is mother? How is Greta’s mind? CHILD SOLDIER Solamente refused to take a cab, wanting the money for airplane magazines. But the route she took by bus and train and foot was so long and convoluted, she made Departures with only souvenir metal money. Home. Emptying her pockets on the table in the hall made only about a five‐part sound. SOLAMENTE Peter? I’m home. Peter, I’m tired. I’ve never been so tired. CHILD SOLDIER She sits and waits for Peter. She pulls a white hair from a book; she is too tired to read the page. SOLAMENTE You were not built to be a dancer. Dancing took your body all wrong. CHILD SOLDIER Peter and Solamente are the same size. That’s her name for him, in her mind: Peter Same‐Size. SOLAMENTE But your impulse to make space vital does not go away; you make puppet shows with the college students, like it’s a revolutionary cell. It‘s a kind of dancing. CHILD SOLDIER Peter could do the garden, can do the garden, but can’t dance anymore. The adjustments he needs for his ruined hips bring disgrace to other joints and balances. He swings wildly through the garden with a watering can. He is neither man nor woman. He gardens and is patient. For So, patient for Greta. 3.b) Traipsing (Lelu and Mazout travel very, very far. Mazout is furtive, they are half‐
running.) Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 24
CHILD SOLDIER Until they are in another city; her money is gone. He pays. SOLAMENTE (Listening, realizing.) The dogs’ve stopped. CHILD SOLDIER Someone after him. All this hugger‐mugger. She’s getting big again. SOLAMENTE (Writing a letter to Lelu.) “Dear Lelu.” LELU Why must every last manufactured thing on earth taste but exactly like piss? Every jungle gym, every glass eyeball? SOLAMENTE “I found the dogs by the road in the morning, too weak to bite the flies. One is called King. One is called Lapis because the drug dealer’s wife made rings. The dogs’ brains are scrambled up – broken iron, taste like pee – but they gentle to the hand. Up, and full of blood I slid them on the kitchen table, then the vets.” CHILD SOLDIER Until they are fucking in a little woods in Poland. LELU What river is this? CHILD SOLDIER In the river, under the river, products of manufacture. The river in which you swim, in which you rinse out your dinner bowl, refrigerator cars filled with bodies. SOLAMENTE “He blew up one trailer. He abandoned the second. He couldn’t get the dogs to shut up!” LELU What is this river? SOLAMENTE “They were breathing. When they moved their jaws it sounded like a skateboard missing some bearings. The gaps in their teeth make small theaters in their bites.” LELU A cow for shoes Chocolate for the cake Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 25
Gold rings on my fingers Coffee to stay awake Cocoa coffee Slim purple shoes Rape and a wandering shirt OK City, Paris, Martinique The sun septics yellow And makes the sound of a bug SOLAMENTE “Their eyes were jellyfish in a methedrine sea.” LELU 30 pairs of shoes 30 postcards to Zion Chocolate has an action in it, a cyanide catch SOLAMENTE “The vet tells me he’d kill them. They’ll take a lot of care. A river. I don’t see how I can get out of it though.” CHILD SOLDIER The cities progressively worse. Letters he burns. Wiping the bottle. Then not wiping the bottle. SOLAMENTE Come on up, Lapis. Come up King. The house isn’t on fire, there is no thunder. CHILD SOLDIER She could not understand the words of his song. MAZOUT Where the water comes from And where the water goes to Strength flows to the weaker part Ready for the rest of you You bite into a pear A drunk wasp crawls to your lips; Falling from the sky: The dancer’s broken hips Everything Has a spirit Released by sound Now it’s silent Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 26
Purgatory Seashell Sliderule La vie, tout breve Et je sens la dedans du’il faudra que je crève Minerals: aconite, bitumen Flower: convolvulus, drooping melie Love is not consolation, it is light; The horizon’s irony The odd creature With no heart or brain Who lived without memory Will begin all over again. SOLAMENTE (To the dogs.) How you ever going to rhyme bow with wow, a mouth like that? Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 27
Part Three (Narrated by Solamente. A pornographic remake of the movie San Francisco, the Clark Gable and Janette MacDonald version, plays.) One: Waiting SOLAMENTE They watch a movie in a rich man’s house. Night all the time. Breakfasts of soft ice cream. On the screen, a small dog eats the head of a young child, child dead by falling bricks. MAZOUT I’m sick. LELU Poor little kamikaze. SOLAMENTE ...the food I ate something I ate must be I’m not complaining. “You’re not?” Just making conversation. *“Out of what? I wouldn’t wear shoes made out of that leather.” LELU *I wouldn’t wear shoes made out of that leather, even if they were red and shiny. SOLAMENTE Out of how much I trust you to make fun of me. *“You’re going to die and want to. MAZOUT *You’re going to die and want to, and I don’t want you to, but the part of me that makes up reasons to keep you here has died, so I think that’s a knee‐slapper, you and your bellyache. LELU Is there something you’re leaving out? MAZOUT Such as what? LELU I don’t know. MAZOUT Open your mouth. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 28
SOLAMENTE Lelu’s grandmother was a German Jew who fled through diplomatic connection to Japan where she was a prostitute showing American pornographic movies to pilots before their suicides, a fisher’s island, Northwestern Japan, 1945. Lelu and Mazout are drunk in a rich man’s house watching vintage contraband, some of which her grandmother showed, some of which she was in! sprocketing gaily along the tracks. LELU My mother had a stereopticon. This is what I thought a movie was. I didn’t know how to hold my eyes so that the pictures would come together. I figured there had to be find‐the hidden‐picture differences. There was a card of a human tooth in a pair of pliers. My guess was the left and the right were out of facing jaws. Then you get older, you know, and pictures come together. Things get deeper. But I hold onto the idea that we see the world the way we do because one thing has slid over a similar, but crucially different thing. (Lelu and Mazout slide over one another.) MAZOUT My angel is a splattermouth. Shudder and splatterverse. Diverse as a wife, but *not that. LELU *Not that. SOLAMENTE From city to city they have gone, collapsing and collapsing. He sings and she has an act now singing too, separate clubs, her skirts with a language of trees, and underwear that is a kind of make up. She is large again; her insulin levels are bad; her eyes, weak. She lifts her throat to – what? Gas lamps? (Lelu gets up, makes a bowl of ice cream.) A small dog in Dresden licks her throat. (Lelu does a short, complicated dance for Mazout.) LELU Cherry sundae Cherry sundae Sugar sugar sugar With a cherry on top (She repeats the dance, slowly, showing him exactly how it’s done.) SOLAMENTE Many of us, by invisible hand, sign on to be killed – we move, by choice, closer and closer to the unguarded operation of epic machines. We spend our days carrying buckets of oil to the axles and joints, and when the giant brass gears kick out and bounce their teeth into our chests, there is no water for the mouths of the young or Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 29
the old. There is no water for our fires. We’re there to protect the fallen machinery from the blood of the crushed. At the edge of every disaster there’s adrenalin, which is the chemical signature of hope. At the edge of every act of indifference is sentiment. LELU I love movies. MAZOUT What are we seeing? LELU Movies. Another movie about how much fun a prostitute is – how she’s in on your joke. Am I fun? MAZOUT You are no fun. Because you are in on the joke. LELU I see pretty pictures and I have sad feelings. Feelings lead to opinions, and opinions are the footprints of truth leaving the room. Then it’s just you and me. (Sex, no kissing.) SOLAMENTE Her head’s a projector and he fucks the lens. Bhopal shines out of his asshole. (The sound of film through sprockets; Solamente is the dub voice. The film splits from itself, and projects versions. Fake ruins play into actual ruins – refugee for refugee, repeating slowly, showing exactly how it’s done.) Film is made out of melted sugar. They take the kisses they are not kissing, melt them in the bowls of their hips, smear the clear liquid on cold marble, and cut the sugar to strips of film. (The movie melts. The burning celluloid is a cherry. In the cherry there is a stone, in the stone there is an airplane.) Airplanes are made of arsenic. Arsenic is the main ingredient of ice cream. The plane is a cherry sundae. They are sick of ice cream. (The projector breaks. Lelu makes repairs.) MAZOUT How’d you learn to fix a projector? You a ghost of somebody? LELU There are no ghosts. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 30
MAZOUT There are for guilty people. LELU You mean the ghosts are guilty, or the people who see them? MAZOUT Both, I guess. LELU You guilty? MAZOUT Maybe I don’t see you. LELU Maybe a dog don’t see a bone. MAZOUT Bone’s a ghost. Guilty of where all that meat’s gone. (A reference to her weight.) Maybe I don’t see you. LELU You count every bone. There are movies in your eyes. I look into both your eyes and see into the back of your head. I see me. Looking at your head. Almost over. (She moves to serve him whisky.) MAZOUT I don’t drink. LELU You drink. MAZOUT Not anymore. (The film is repaired. Lelu describes an earthquake.) LELU There is a sinus‐level awareness like an opening to ozone or the stillness between the eyes of a prey animal not sure which way to turn its head at intuition of attack. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 31
Then cabinets start talking the language of insects, birds kill themselves flying kamikaze into reflections. Before you know it the house is a knee joint flooded with calcium slip; the house or city rushes for the exit but forgets which one; you are on the back of an animal you are unaware you ever mounted and a billion dead pests are singing now as if electricity were the anthem of an arthropod revolution. When, if you live, you return to the spectacular manufacture of dust, after the young men have masturbated and the cats breathe again... you are sitting there, empty‐pocket participant‐purchaser of the hasty and brittle crux‐of‐the‐solo that misplaces entire busses and relief trucks and leaves no room for survivor but commercial arenas, which has no heart for you, now penniless, and will not even recognize you as a promising sinner, but will kill you for the second or third time since the disaster. SOLAMENTE Film is powered by diamond. LELU The diamond is a gift to God. SOLAMENTE God has no throat or ear for diamonds. LELU The diamond goes away and there is nothing but light. We roll a tobacco of skin cells and drink tea made out of insect grease, all day, no questions. (They are in the movie. They look exactly like themselves.) SOLAMENTE He is Clark Gable. She is Janette MacDonald. Single speaker dub. Two: Wandering LELU This dust. Where is this dust coming from? SOLAMENTE Dust blows from over the ocean Dust falls from the sky Dust is a puppet show Over as it goes LELU What do you sing? MAZOUT You hear me. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 32
LELU These aren’t your old songs. They aren’t the songs that make you famous. MAZOUT (Contempt.) Fame. LELU I don’t understand them. SOLAMENTE (Reading.) “Dear Lelu.” LELU I wish she’d stop. SOLAMENTE “His hindquarters up in a cart.” LELU “Dear Mazout.” SOLAMENTE He is arrested at last in Belgium, where they were buying chocolate. They only spend enough time in a city to do what the tourists do. SOLAMENTE (Crushing Mazout’s letter.) “Dear Lelu.” (Not reading.) He is arrested and sent to Arusha. They both… the lice down the drain. Mazout is a genocide singer. His songs were what the young ones sang to time their blows, to push through; to spill. His voice is what comes down the mountains to the towns and to the cities; songs; everywhere singing, and burning. What is this dust made of? The songs of the artists. MAZOUT Peony seashell sliderule Less, lover, less. LELU I thought I was getting two radio stations at once, but that was the way the music was. I heard him on the radio. SOLAMENTE You play the ratio – you against the radio. It is bigger; you make yourself a fraction. He is not there anymore – Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 33
LELU (Reading.) “Dear Lelu.” MAZOUT This story that – SOLAMENTE He abandons her without means in quarantine. Her clothes are stripped from her; she is sewn into a shapeless dress and the shoes have grown to cellulose or melted movies, cast to hooves. SOLAMENTE Lice are driven from her hair down drains. SOLAMENTE, LELU (Yom Kippur.) All vows, oaths, consecrations that we may vow, swear, or prohibit upon ourselves from this until the next, may bounty come – regarding them all, we regret them henceforward. They all will be permitted, abandoned, null – without power and without standing. Our vows shall not be valid vows; our prohibitions shall not be valid. LELU (The letter.) “King mostly blind; moves by peripheral vision.” …stories of Solamente’s that will not end. Often the dead letter office – how is she mapping me? (Answering.) As Greeks found the water jugs and archer – star by star, imagining pattern. I don’t get all the letters. But they come. SOLAMENTE In a small pond Peter wades and grows lotuses. Mazout is a genocide singer. The world is a small set of hills. An Oklahoma, a Rwanda. An unwiped asshole. LELU From radio to radio I look for his songs until I am in the radio, until what I said in the slur of love is a lyric and I am in the song; he is so beautiful he is invisible and I am in him. There is no difference between me and the radio. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 34
SOLAMENTE Dust is a puppet show. LELU Mazout the genocide singer Is the sound right round the dial No I don’t love him anymore I loved him for a while Down from the snowy mountains Up from the heat of the fields I will love him forevermore Only a puppet is real What is this dust Everywhere you go? What is this dust? Puppet show SOLAMENTE Movie screen opens to a diorama of the waste city at the foot of the hill. What should be a puppet is a boy. Reverse Pinocchio: I dream my imaginary boy is a real puppet. Three: Puppet Show a) Genocide Day (Child Soldier is the chief puppeteer. Lelu drinks at a café; she falls in and out of sleep. This is the fighting she sees on her journeys. Friends are trained by a Militia Man.) CHILD SOLDIER Boys mass on the hills. Boys mass on the hills, The rain speaks Inside the rain. Armed boys train. (The Militia Man instructs One to slice Two’s throat; One obeys. Militia Man leaves the pair. A starving Dog licks Two’s wound. Clamps down. Dog language comes out of Two’s mouth.) Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 35
DOG I don’t want to hurt you. It’s just that I’m so, so hungry. You can hear me speak dog language when I breathe through your throat. I don’t know what comes after the forest. (The forest burns. Two and the Dog burn up. One, mindless, dances) MOTHER Mother dead: child riot. The children break every dish. They denigrate fire. FIRE, ONE Arriere! Je rechauffe les bons, mais je brule les méchants! Petit barbare imprudent, tu as insulte à tous Dieux bienveillants, qui tendaient entre le malheur et toi une fragile barrière! Tu as brandi le tisonnier, renversé la bouilloire, éparpillé les allumettes, gare! Gare au Feu dansant! Tu fondrais come un flocon sur sa lange éscarlate! (Rain.) RAIN Lime of blindness, fingernails of stutter, house of cripple, hatchet‐throw; rain of feet, mud of skin, country‐song of blood. CHILD SOLDIER All children leave all mothers. MAZOUT (Singing.) I give you everything Do as I say MOTHER Up against a majestic force, the boys wheel uphill, chopping with their blades and, all burning in water. (Battle.) CHILD SOLDIER Use the sticky knife to scrape the blood tar, to clean the hoof of the cow – no, we are mutilating a corpse. Cook the tar for heroin, use dried nerves unthreaded from the mutilated corpse for kindling, use the desiccated brain system for steel wool strainer and inhale chips of spine. Flood , like the number Thousand, up from the gouge hole, the fuck hole, the lung puncture, the pulled‐open nostril, the ants which from it flow, the lively boys – heads back and grinning, our teeth mixed in our hands with the teeth we have cut free for souvenirs. Cut the dead from the broken‐bulb lampposts to, to – (He can’t go on for a second.) SOLAMENTE Their lips, full of drug – unable to pronounce – Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 36
CHILD SOLDIER (Resuming.) To bring their pockets closer, their genitals closer for gag. MAZOUT (Singing.) Power, power, Down from the sky. Breathe, breathe, Sky is asthma‐blue kiss; Use incense from the dry pubic bone. The road is long Too long: I carry you SOLAMENTE They carry bones, hangovers, handfuls of dust, snow‐globe brains. (Solamente demands a change in the puppet show.) The story of the Dead Mother. CHILD SOLDIER Once there was a woman with seven children. WOMAN I am a woman with seven children. CHILD SOLDIER Once there was a woman who lost seven children. WOMAN I am a woman who – (She pulls a plastic bag out of her mouth.) In a bag is ash. I sprinkle the ash in a chevron shape. In the crook of the shape I burn my hands. (She takes off her hands and burns them.) CHILD SOLDIER The woman burns her hands carrying hot stones in grief. WOMAN Back in time the seven. (The Devil attacks her.) CHILD SOLDIER Three children were from soldiers. The husband wouldn’t have her. The Devil is done. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 37
WOMAN Go where you belong. (The Devil rises from rape and leaves.) CHILD SOLDIER And he went to live by himself on the rocks where no tone plays and no grass grows. DEVIL I spit before I piss, and piss so long I flood a small valley. In the lake I see my face and in the anatomy of the polarized light I see the devil lurk like a tumor deeply debating its election – what to kill. Devil crab‐wise in Piss City. I shake and walk higher. SOLAMENTE How the children die. CHILD SOLDIER Carried in a robe, smothered, holding him from the cold. MOTHER Ate the toner cracked from a machine in the dump. CHILD SOLDIER By parasite. MOTHER A frail child in exhaustion on a hot day. Marks of his eyeglasses over each ear, his glasses lost. CHILD SOLDIER In a paint factory, no respirator. MOTHER In a ditch by the dirt factory. CHILD SOLDIER Once she was a woman with seven children. MOTHER We burn the body parts in a trash barrel. CHILD SOLDIER By the eyes, and by the fingers. Burning the witnesses. MOTHER Consoled by tears I pray for no more tears, so my consolation will be heaven’s. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 38
CHILD SOLDIER She turns into a salt river and the river flows to the ocean. The ocean breeds strange fish. DEVIL The Devil takes a bus from Piss City and I catch the fish and sell them and eat them until I am an x‐ray, all fish bones. (His hook catches his clothes. He reels in and pulls his clothes off, revealing a luminous skeleton. The ocean swallows the earth and he is king of the ocean.) CHILD SOLDIER The sand of My sisters Sand of sisters Come and see what The river left the house I marry the dove WOMAN And the woman, as sea, receives children. The father of three of my children was 15, 13, was – 10. Gun to my head. Only salt wins every time. (End of puppet show.) p.s. (Lelu wanders, transforming.) SOLAMENTE Every step, every day, Lelu, heavier. She thinks she is walking straight but she is walking a crescent. She does not know where she is. She is pregnant by him. The kerosene they used to clean the lice from her hair – she will build a fire on the delta, lean back and comet – her hair on fire in childbirth on the beach. There is a lot of walking involved in a war. These boys walking, miles, their commander’s water on their backs, blood from their loose milk teeth keeping their mouths wet. The heat is chains and the cold is razor. Lelu is, in fact, a cow. LELU Well, well wanderlust – Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 39
Where to next? Across Cow’s Ford And I owe the sea; Ethiopia, and washout SOLAMENTE Mazout left: this way. (He comes in at dawn from an evening, surprised to see Lelu awake.) MAZOUT Lelu! Flower of the morning. How lovely to see you, petal. LELU You are too clean. MAZOUT I dreamed I saw a rose, and in the morning there was a rose. Drooping melie. LELU The people you were with leave nothing – MAZOUT I told you to stay in the room. LELU Depends on what you think a room is. MAZOUT The difference between public and private. LELU What difference could that make? It’s all mine. You. MAZOUT Like Claudine you understand that some women like to be raped a little in front of others. Different women want the shit beat out of them in private. LELU No. None. MAZOUT You’re lying. No, you don’t lie. You are private. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 40
LELU I want to know – MAZOUT Shut up. You can’t begin to understand the level of my conversation. The things people say have to matter, sometimes, Lelu. LELU I can be quiet. I can be silent. You won’t like that either. MAZOUT I want you to shut so far up the word for it isn’t even silence. It is corruption: silence with cancer. LELU Mazout, your mentality is deranged. Your thoughts are bigger than your head. Let me cool your head. Tell me. MAZOUT Shut up. (They do not move. Action described over stillness.) SOLAMENTE He stopped at the butchers’ on the way back home… He ties a pig’s cut dick into her mouth. MAZOUT Fucking kike. LELU Lelu, feet heavy, blind, in quarantine gown walks crescent east and south and west. SOLAMENTE “Dear Lelu: No I don’t know your fancy pants genocides of ancient Europe but the dogs are low as a plant that bleeds and you know, shit’s in the wind.” MAZOUT I am out in the water for you; it’s to my neck – I can’t go forward or back. My feet – barley touch; about to die the death I want. We must want the death of the world. You are the candle calling the Queen of All Saints down for my sinful soul. I don’t know anything but you. (He leaves.) LELU (Spits. To Solamente.) There are good, good people that perform genocides. It is absurd to call it a “fault,” you see. Stereopticon. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 41
SOLAMENTE “The dealer leased the dogs out to run deer – illegal. Hunters cover the dogs in deer pee to get up close and then cut them to the chase so’s to wear the deer down. The dogs were thin when we found them; they could not get down the softest meat. The owner was a drug dealer from Springfield, with a number of convictions, and then he tried to sue animal control to get his dogs back. Didn't work.” Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 42
PART FOUR (Lelu is narrator. The body of the character Lelu is invisible. The actress narrates from one side.) LELU When Solamente’s mother died the light was thinned white paint, there was a dog on the bed, there was squash in the vegetable garden and lotus in the pond, there was a daughter sleeping, leaning from her chair to Greta’s pillow. There was a gray hair by chance in the pages of a book, marking place like a missalette… Greta’s face was peaceful, painting out, translucent with thinner. SOLAMENTE “Dear Lelu: Due to the recent death of” ‐ LELU She walked. SOLAMENTE “Come home.” LELU She walked. SOLAMENTE “I can’t walk with you.” LELU Lelu walked. It was work. The sky released dynamite. SOLAMENTE “There is enough here.” LELU And the sea reared trauma. And the wind urged necessity. And the sun removed sufficiency. And the wounds discharged weakness. And the healing captured grudges. Bigger, bigger, moonbelly. Head low, shaking, low is how she goes. SOLAMENTE “Lelu, you were some woman I knew. That’s about it. Come home.” LELU The van comes for the body. Lapis hides. Pete answers the door; Solamente idly tears a wide squash leaf in her hands back in the garden. The absolutely spiritless Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 43
matter of the mother is rattled across the porch. For the moment, Greta is the capture of light at the tree line. SOLAMENTE Too much. LELU Fat with baby but thin all over. I weigh less than when I was one of me. Lapis will not come in the house ever again; the male is dead soon. SOLAMENTE (Burying King in a home‐dug grave.) Child of man who sits in darkness bound up in death’s iron – He will bring you out of the dark, and sunder your bonds. Foolish sinner, afflicted through sin, your soul loathes all food and you reach the gates of death. If there be an angel out of a thousand, to speak your part, then the Lord will be gracious to him and say: Deliver him from the grave; I have found expiation. LELU Solamente does not go to her mother’s funeral, but she digs the hole for the dog herself. She lifts him up over her head and turns three times. She buries him. SOLAMENTE This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is expiation. And I’ll proceed to a good, long life and peace. LELU What delta is this? What’s the graveyard? Here are you bringing me, my far wandering wandering? (Solamente is with Lelu now, following behind.) SOLAMENTE Too much, Lelu. Let’s go. LELU The bow on the cello does not stop, Lelu does not stop. Love him or not I have no way to hold him. I will have to rebuild my memory. How to hold? How is what happened shod, how does it walk? SOLAMENTE I find her – LELU She finds me – Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 44
SOLAMENTE Finally catches up to her – LELU To me on a beach. So builds a fire; Lelu’s having a baby, it’s night. (Lelu goes into labor.) I’ll kick you in the head if you don’t move like I tell you to. SOLAMENTE A train load of flowers carried to the river. LELU She lies with her head to the fire to burn the pain out of her mind, to make equal the fire‐without and the fire‐within. The world is being devoured by the wars of children driven by aged singers in nightclubs far away. She lies back on the beach, her head to the fire, Sola – the catcher. SOLAMENTE Adieu, pastourelles! Pastoreaux, adieu! L’Enfant méchant a déchiré Un tender histoire. L’Enfant ingrate qui dormait sous la garde De notre chien bleu. Nous ne savon lier la main, étancher le sang. LELU The kerosene they used to kill lice on her head in quarantine catches fire. Her hair is fire and she is giving birth. For the twelve hours of darkness, she is suffering, not consumed. Coma, comet. The baby comes, her name: Chicotte. This baby’s grandchild will fire an arrow through the sky, will be free. LELU, SOLAMENTE For the sin we have committed before You under duress or willingly. And for the sin we have committed before You by hard‐heartedness. For the sin we have committed before You by eating and drinking, By the prattle of our lips, By a motion of the eye: For all these, God of mercy, show mercy, atone for us. For the sin of casting off Heaven’s yoke, And for the sin we have committed before You by tale‐bearing. For the confused heart: For these, God of mercy, mercy. Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 45
SOLAMENTE Lelu, what sin is being burned away? LELU Cowardice. SOLAMENTE What burns? LELU Knowledge. SOLAMENTE What feels it? LELU Spirit. SOLAMENTE What fuels it? LELU Time. SOLAMENTE What stops it? LELU Time runs out. I set out in September to buy shoes with my friend. My head is full of my last argument. I may have been wrong, but I wasn’t finished. LELU, SOLAMENTE Burning away silence, one’s distance from the world. Free now that we have been destroyed in fire. Burning away silence, one’s distance from the world. Free now that we have been destroyed in fire. LELU The hour of the birds and babies – 5 a.m. The End Drunk, Still Drinking 1/15/10 BURNT UMBER by Erik Ehn 1
BURNT UMBER Prologue (Lulu is a 90 year old woman narrating from the side of the stage. She sometimes enters the action to play herself as a child; sometimes animates a puppet or a Super 8 film of herself as a child.) LULU Though I am a girl of three I see... Car battery factory. Plate factory. The small grave in which are buried Erana’s baby teeth. As I was saying, as I’ve said, I’ve said before – The sun don’t flow it falls And as it drops, recalls: One day passes in One. (She shoots an arrow. The arrow is the sun. When it completes its arc, part One is over. The arrow lands in the heart of dreaming.) Burnt Umber 1/19/10 2
One (One day passes in One.) Greek CONNIE I’m not going to make you breakfast. JACK I know. CONNIE You keep a baker’s hours. JACK Church. CONNIE No. JACK I’ll call you at lunch. Collin’s for Erana after school. CONNIE If I went to Sacred Heart with you – JACK No. CONNIE Goodbye. (They cross away from each other.) MAMAMA Jack buys Erana ice cream; she has temporary metal caps on her broken teeth, waiting for the crowns. Her birth mother fed her on Coca Cola and once, Drano. You could make a bomb out of the things in that girl’s stomach. She’s always sucking the temporaries off their stumps and they wind up at Doctor Collins a lot. The dentist gives free coupons to Ed Martin’s Ice Cream Store for Girls Who Don’t Cry. Erana has a softball‐sized scoop of pink on the sugar cone, and walks down the street with Jack. She didn’t cry, her face is sweet, she and Jack look at each other, sun and moon’s interstellar adoration on either side of the pink, licked, made‐for‐joy earth. Then evening comes, a bus. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 3
Erana on her own CONNIE On the riverwalk by the Arkansas looking for fossils, Erana sings to the creatures stirring trapped in the drought pools. ERANA Because all the size and the silence – All my love – she listens. Slow, impound. She swimmer, the silent, she listens and: sound – The love inside me, impound The words of capsule captive sea she – Probe and know, my bones they bait darkness, All my love, she listens. We, invisible As dark in dark, Or light in dark, overwhelmed Lulu. Then she will be hit by the truck, then she will come home, then she will be gone. Man on his own (Connie and Erana watch Jack. Lulu, autistic, perseverates – a lovely, tiny dance.) CONNIE After daily mass you do some work at the coffee shop and write graffiti in the rest room, about fucking. I recognize your handwriting. Urine candy. Whiskey. He makes candy of his urine. The kids tend to sleep at Mamama’s house, small crackerbox across South Oklahoma Street; Erana rescues Lulu from the fire. Saves her from floods. Her mind. ERANA (To Lulu.) He played a cop on a TV show one episode once. He found the body, then was hit on the head from behind by a pipe. CONNIE Now he’s a genocide scholar at TJC in Oklahoma. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 4
He, Jack, foolish in a suit of clothes in the bar where the boys who live in trees turn the pool table over and scatter the balls, each a solar system science project prop. Erana’s shadow coughs in the bath, shadow in the water, Lulu sever sever sever ever ever. (Re, Jack.) Contemplicide: He has broken his central stillness. (Lulu recovers herself. She is a child.) Bedtime story (Jack reads to Lulu from his thesis.) JACK Rope rape bayonet place where sons live in the trees. Child in fields, eaten by dogs, hide in hole – snake won’t bite – fends off dogs. Church of St. Famille – no need to kill her. HIV. Dead child in heaven, witnessed all the rapes. Ever knew only dicks and dogs. From the Big Book of Genocide: They tied me With rope They raped me So many In the room The soldiers I was two months pregnant Until my legs would not work I begged them To kill me Better that No one ever want you And he broke a beer bottle off in my vagina. I crawled To the field And had my baby. And I could not move As the dog ate my child. They brought me to the church St. Famille where they were raping the women and holding some of us. When the time there was over and they were killing people they said – don’t bother, this one is already dead. I crawled to the place where my sons lived in the trees in secret. They had gone from the trees by the time I got there. I lived in a hole. I lay in the hole I could not move or make a change. A snake was there but did not bite me. A dog smelled my blood and the snake killed it. They found me. HIV. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 5
The baby inside me was witness to all the rapes. The world for him is rapes and a dog. You can tell him in prayer that the sun is shining, but he can tell you it is dicks and dogs. (Shutting the book, looking at sleeping Lulu.) Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Green Arrow, green fear. (A milk truck rolls by, small in the distance.) Erana’s Dream ERANA Lulu, I dreamed you were a prince who came from far away with sharks in your belly. You were saving the sharks to eat up your enemies. You made friends with a man who looked like he wanted to help you, but he was actually trying to delay you long enough so the sharks would eat through the bag in you and kill you before killing everyone else. (The arrow lands.) Burnt Umber 1/19/10 6
Two (One month passes in Two. Just before morning. A calendar goes through an autumn of itself, shedding days.) Jack beats Erana (Connie, in bed with Jack. dreams about Lulu.) ERANA A play lit exclusively by lightning or all scene changes accomplished by light pressure on the bright side of Mercury. CONNIE Rain wont stop. Lent. This child lent to us by Medusa. Christ. Celibate of affect. Snake. Baby – would not take the nipple. My face, to her, is a kind of mirror. There is no brain behind the face she sees. MAMAMA (about Lulu, who is, in one time frame, her old age peer.) She is in the future. There is a small motor embedded in the autistic by science then, a shuddering engine, bolted to a mount in her head, that slows perseveration, but as with a dry drunk, the underlying method remains the same. JACK Erana put on your shoes Erana comb your hair Erana I am late for work (Beats her.) Lie there. (Lulu is with Erana; Lulu rocks, listens. The moon is the bell of a tuba. Erana soothes Lulu.) CONNIE Opposite the avenues of hair Erana plays Chopin on her tuba. She has to practice behind the ShopRite when they stop using their skateboards. What the music of Chopin plays: ERANA When you pass through the water I will be with you, in the river you will not drown. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; the flames shall not consume you. CONNIE Lulu, at three, or five, or so, doesn’t know who her sister is. She understands how night through an open door works. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 7
ERANA I won’t lose you through an open door, and I’ll quit the tuba – we walk through the water, we walk through the fire. We’ll be all right. (Shifts her attention to Connie. Meanwhile Lulu goes away.) Tuba moon for mom in Chopin. Water into water, light into light, daughter to mother flowing down the long hair of the night. If it was just I and either one of you, I could count to either two. (Erana turns, sees Lulu is gone. She loses her all the time.) CONNIE Where’s Erana? Asleep on the bus. ERANA Missed my stop. CONNIE She takes the bus, to ride the bus, after tuba practice, gets lost. ERANA I’ll walk. CONNIE Too far. ERANA I’m all right. CONNIE They give Lulu dopamine as a tent peg nail to keep her from blowing away in the wind of herself. Sometimes – ERANA I’m all right. CONNIE With her sister’s drugs in her, Erana calms down. Though the prescription isn’t for her the accelerator slows her. She takes the medicine when her sister runs away. Lulu runs away when she doesn’t take it. (Both children have run away, separately.) ERANA All my love, she listens. All my love she captured listens. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 8
CONNIE No bus past 11, monumental walk to Tuesday’s extended hours, milk tea at the dead quiet Ethiopian place – ERANA Milk tea, loaded with ginger, Silent night, she listens. All along the night, love’s pure light, capsule sea Captive swims, she listens to me We, invisible As dark in dark, Or light in dark, overwhelmed CONNIE Walks all night, home by breakfast; she says nothing. Doing dishes, tired, she fails to answer – then she is made by the face, thwack. She is dry and her chapped lips can’t make for the mouthpiece. MAMAMA Can, but it hurts. CONNIE Coming back early in the morning, Erana sleeps with Lulu. Your house. MAMAMA They go the places each other has gone, in a short dream. The moss and fear, rusted parts and ledges‐over‐valleys. Cat‐tooth each other’s tee shirts at the underarms for salt. The still flexible long bones of their feet – pour tears there. ERANA You wrap me in the lily’s killing heat, and put snow in my steel bowls. Goodnight nurse. CONNIE Erana gets lost down avenues of hair. Erana takes the bus everywhere. After school she will take the bus like it’s her job, takes the bus like stairs, to the arena or the glass factory or the battery factory or the library or Sea Planet… She pulls out avenues of hair and she is in stress along the long tress. (Mamama begins to pull Erana into a scene with her.) MAMAMA At the tilotrichomania support group at B General, you’re the youngest; Cosie teaches you how to work the coffee maker. You drink your first cup, half milk and a quarter sugar, you’re ready to talk about the avenues of hair, the night bus and terrified, and you learned to play an instrument. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 9
CONNIE Mamama turns Erana’s hair into the smoke of the cigarette girls in Carmen. MAMAMA (To Connie.) She’s good at the tuba, steady, a jackhammer man. She will never once be kissed on the mouth in love. The closest she comes to social contact really, more than yearning, is when your husband knocks her down. Then, more than one in the room together. Then: less than one walks away, less than one remains. You have to add more each time to make the math work. Mamama CONNIE Thickening, coarsening. An inner softening. Thinner hair in shorter styles. Lower heels, wider shoes. Less whistling and fewer teeth. MAMAMA Help me make my dinner. ERANA Chocolate. MAMAMA A molé of spider and ice. Combine the mountains with blood, add fossils and mash till black. ERANA See my heart shift in poverty. The coffee is a zombie; When the rabbits die, the hounds will be cooked. Meanwhile, semper fi. Honey Is sweet and the mouth is mine. The mountains meet the sky ERANA, MAMAMA Held in two hands – Break, pull, shine – Burnt Umber 1/19/10 10
Three (Three years pass in Three. Three giants walk away over a hill. Starts at night; Connie, Jack, Erana, in bed. Lulu is curled like a maggot inside moonlight.) CONNIE Where the binding place is. Still winter and raining. LULU I wish my mother – Same as me. ERANA (Re: Lulu.) She is in the future. There is a small motor In her head that slows the speeding/repeating And makes light readable to her face. She is here, now. Face moving to massive concentrations of light, Reading as if a hand for Braille. (Young Lulu reads the sleeper’s faces, by pressing her face against them.) LULU In my suit of lights. Night’s a bullfight, Planets come and go Night time game of blood and turbines I wait a while, drought‐river root ERANA She is old. She is frail. Lulu, Lulu Lulu drink your water. LULU In sixth grade a science teacher gave each student a sugar cube to take home; the homework was to change it. Some burned it, crushed it, poisoned it. Gabe Frayne brought it back without doing anything to it – things change all the time. Jack in the house. Connie in the house. Erana in the house. Changing. ERANA Autistic. Bastard. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 11
CONNIE Erana is Lulu’s half sister. Late night phone, from back when he drank – ERANA Mom works for the phone company… CONNIE “You have a daughter, Jack.” All her baby teeth cracked out from malnutrition; she has silver, so the real ones grow in straight. Tiny girl… ERANA National Guard for satellite control. LULU Three years pass in Three. Starts at night. Erana on her own LULU Jurassic, Erana. The rain comes quickly and it is cold The sea has room for all the land. (Lulu runs away and sleeps with electricity. Erana runs away to the library.) ERANA Lulu, unmedicated, out and about, sleeps by the generators where the watery sound calms her. When Lulu wakes up she is a – LULU But not Erana’s medicine. Erana sweats like bacon, like a burn victim. Her lips smell of bleach. JACK What does she run off too? LULU Aquarium or other libraries, out where men on suspended license ride their nieces’ bikes. She signed out a nursing book in her own name on behalf of a woman at the library who didn’t have a card or an address. She goes to find her. ERANA Needs that book back. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 12
(Lulu is nearly hit by a milk truck, about the size of a German Shepherd; but they just stare at each other.) Bedtime story (Lulu brings Jack a treat.) LULU Aqua Velva and nutmeg. Bile. Stirred with a bone. Here are monkey cookies. (Lulu reads Jack a bedtime story.) The dark of the night is the inside of a flat tire. Laughing like dropping cups of pink blood. JACK Lulu, I can’t sleep. LULU Everything mouth, everything out, everything empty skin. I was meant to remain within the branches of the tree – the boys and girls who live in them, walking so long the back breaks, my face is made of ants. I was in the field; battery factory. (In her present tense, when she’s 90.) I keep forgetting my father is dead now. Use his skin for drum. Don’t you want to go see Tracy? Don’t you want to go see June? Jack beats Erana CONNIE Jack beats Erana. JACK Erana? Erana? Honey – (Beats her.) ERANA Yes? (Back in time a few minutes. Connie is just home from work. A conversation between Jack and Connie; Erana spies.) JACK … The good of marine archaeology? She was going to be a vet. What kind of kid ‐? Burnt Umber 1/19/10 13
CONNIE Not all her life. Was large animal aquatic. This isn’t so far off. JACK Pig. CONNIE Eleven years old. JACK You love her? CONNIE (Pause.) She’s your kid. JACK I got to get to work. CONNIE You’re underwater. You’re sub‐marine. (Erana comes forward.) ERANA It’s fossils. JACK Erana? CONNIE Across the street. Mom her dinner. (Connie leaves.) ERANA Just came from there. JACK Erana, honey? (Which restores to the moment before the beating. The beating.) LULU Four planets of slightly different size are rolled out of a bag onto a maple cutting board. They make the sound of expensive scientific instruments, breaking. The planets are fists and the sound is all Erana’s plastic jewelry, breaking. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 14
JACK (Educating Erana.) The reason: LULU She had put burgundy shoe polish on her head to cover the spot where she pulls out her hair in her sleep. And she fell asleep on the sofa watching an old Lloyd Bridges TV show, late afternoon, leaving a burgundy streak declining at the ark of her through‐and‐through, sack‐of‐potatoes numbness. After the first four planets there is some time. You are way out there. Your head is not your own. Don’t bother, this one is dead. (Retreat. Connie and Mom.) CONNIE I’ll get dinner. Mom, I’ll make it. Mom, get down from the cupboard. Mom, get down from your head. What’s this mess? (Mamama rests with Connie. Lulu and Erana spoon.) MAMAMA Teaches political science at Tulsa Junior College. JACK (An article he’s working on. He perseverates with Lulu.) The crime of genocide is not murder, multiplied. It is the effort to destroy a world. It is the effort of a world without to describe and destroy a world within. It is the will to suicide with a faith in resurrection. And since there is no resurrection, death is a permanent break and you need a new world. Since there is no new world – or you may not have it, unable to know newness without memory, which you’ve just destroyed – there is only this work, broken, in the planning phase for the next. It is just something to do as we get the future wrong. (Addresses Lulu.) Lulu, what are you drinking? Let me drink. (Crosses to Lulu, rests with her.) ERANA To thaw the pipes, Grandmother crawls under the house, with a candle for heat. (To Jack; separate worlds.) You will know the smoke you wrote through repetitive action. Fire is salt. CONNIE I’ll miss you. JACK I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that you’re going away. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 15
CONNIE Jack, it’s all you do. JACK You got the ticket. CONNIE European theater; it’s like way‐Eastern Queens and a better check than the phone company. Make sure Erana eats. My mom’ll feed the kids. MAMAMA Connie. She called them. Learned to shoot from Robert? Yes. CONNIE I want to hear something every day. (Erana narrates the aging of her baby sister; Lulu is haunted by Jack’s bedtime story.) ERANA LULU Burns her tongue licking the toaster Narrative of the skeleton. midnight then she sees “don’t lick the Ants in the skeleton toaster,” smells my hand‐on‐arm, Skeletal narrative tastes the linoleum echo, feels the Military margin. 12:05, 12:10, “no Lulu,” she hears her Personal grenade. shadow in red toaster light crawl the Nylons and chocolate wall. Butterfly knife. Three years have passed now. Lulu is six. I crawled to a place. She grows thin. She is a growing thing, I lived in the trees. growing thin, translucent as a fish I lived in a hole. bone, wish bone, formiculate mobile I lay in the hole. hung in its own chiming and blown by her own rhymes. Lulu. Fly cleaned, ant cleaned, forgetting this story onto I could not move or make a change. paper. Red sun wrings away. Skinny as a pencil mark, lined up narrow and askew – margin notes. ERANA She tells the stories of saints. Ten times ten thousand. Names of the dead: Tuzla Lists names of the dead, Tulsa, the ’21 riot Name of peace Burnt Umber 1/19/10 16
Ten times ten thousand coffins filled with feces. (Lulu perseverates; she continues through Four. A cow with a hammer in her hands walks by; eyes Lulu.) LULU (Martyrology) Faustinus, Jovita, Craton, Saturninus, Castulus, Magnus, Lucius, St. Agape, virgin, Joseph, Quinidius, Decorosus, Severus – his tears fell and brought a dead man to life, Gregor Lakota, Maximilian Kolbe, Yakym Senkivskyi, Martyrs of Atlas, Enrique Angelelli, Pavel Djidjov, Bedea Chang, Sverian Barnyk, Segundo Montes, Dorothy Kazel, Edith Stein, Saints of the Cristero War, Maria Goretti, Mary Bastian... Burnt Umber 1/19/10 17
Four (Time revolves. The clock is autistic.) Connie goes to war ERANA Connie goes to war. CONNIE That was fast. ERANA She pulls out her piercings for the army as she had to at 13 for cheerleading. Connie’s National Guard, and here she is, she ups for a year! To clear out of the house, and the job at the phone company. Stationed at communications in Eastern Europe; she tracks the satellites. CONNIE What’s in town? Bus breaks down. I don’t have an answer. (Connie climbs a mountain.) ERANA When she’s not at the base, she goes after the satellites on foot. Air’s dry, altitude sick. Up on the mountains clear of light effect, you can see the comsats and the atmosphere‐snuffed space trash. As you follow you can pull thread of 1600 year old versions of Wonderful World of Disney, six million year old Dick Van Dyke shows, you can smoke during dinner, and remember primer poems about trees, killing, frigates and empty shells. (Connie looks at the stars; to Erana.) CONNIE All gleaming and with my father learning the etiquette of the gun. Exact and wrong, hating the racism, loving the racist, needing my father, Robert. Standing in foxglove at six, shooting empty cans of dog food off pink granite. (Shooting cans. Lulu’s martyrology from the previous scene ends.) Jew. Ping. Jew. Ping. New York Jew. PING. He has a truck and does not name it. Has medals and does not explain them. I find his drugs, he does not claim them. He had a daughter. I like satellites. My blood’s my dream, and in the night the echoes of the dead become a song. CONNIE, ERANA Hand, nerves, light: arrow, harp and sword The action is centered on the absence of the word The bus that picks you up is the barrow of the lord And the hospital is ministered by the mother of the verb Burnt Umber 1/19/10 18
The sun don’t flow it falls, recalls: Mamama (Mamama stares at a pot on the stove. The flint is clicking, but the flame isn’t catching. She doesn’t understand. She opens the refrigerator; stares. She opens the pantry and stares. She opens the windows. She turns on all the burners.) LULU She opens the windows and all the gas leaves the house; all the birds die; we bury each one; she forgot to pay the bill, the gas is done, flints clicking harmlessly away. (Outside, together, Lulu and Mamama look at the birds. Lulu makes the clicking sound. They bury the birds, Mama guiding Lulu’s hands.) MAMAMA This is a what a this the what this is a what th – LULU (Internal, perseverating.) Here is the hand is the hand is the bird of the bird here is the hand the bird. Here is the road the foot the shoe, don’t look up. Here is the side to side. Here is the round and round, here is the random, here is the bound. A river, a fever, a marble in a jar. What is this? A cramp, hard candy, this is a pound, an ounce, a what is a cyst a target a hand a bird a don’t, hello hello. Here is the sound of the Mamama hello found a you, you, you, you, your hand the handed the feather the bird overhead and six million milkweed seeds and radio in a truck here is the hive in the you the hand the bird. (Aloud.) Bird. MAMAMA Sometimes birds talk. Sometimes I need to say it. I need to know what a __ is. (They go back inside.) Back in World War Two we were so poor we had to share one eye among us. LULU What did you see? MAMAMA Serpents, mostly. LULU Going away? Burnt Umber 1/19/10 19
MAMAMA Coming out of things. Mostly. But I had a sword growing out of my back. None of them could reach me or change me. LULU Snake comes out of smoke. MAMAMA That’s true. LULU A horse comes out of the snake. MAMAMA Every time. (Lulu senses Erana outside, waiting for her. She runs out and joins her.) CONNIE The bread is autistic, the bowl is autistic, the foot is autistic, the hand, the lips, the arm of the sleeper in the pajama sleeve fallen out from under the sheets, the sleeper, the dreams are autistic. And one day mother burned alive from under that house. ERANA (Inviting Lulu to her PT session.) Don’t you want to go see Tracy? Don’t you want to go see June? LULU No I do not want no one else I don’t want to go so soon You’re my mother Erana’s Dream ERANA I dreamed Mom started drinking again. She came home after shopping or I came in the room and she had bags and boxes and she shifted one over and there was a big crinkly golden can of Ballantine and she wasn’t apologetic or anything. I felt like a rabbit in a herd of penguins. (Connie drinks.) Comsat. Hair. Pushing beauty. CONNIE The long dry season. Erana do not – Erana are – I wish you had a satellite or wish we were two satellites. Wouldn’t that be fun? Burnt Umber 1/19/10 20
Five (Nights. Mirrors are covered with crepe, one after another.) Man on his own JACK (His article. Typing, like tossing a salad.) Since the world is one, we are either victims or perpetrators. Since there is nothing outside the world there is no judge; all are in the case; there is no guilt if there can be no judgment. A universal crime is logically impossible to frame. Sentimental. LULU It is dicks and dogs. Connie goes to war (Erana pulls Lulu from Jack’s scene and reads her a letter from their mother; Connie elsewhere, in the rain.) ERANA She’s gone AWOL, Lulu. Absent Without Leave. Connie is in the driver’s seat of a slightly stolen vehicle – it is a humidity knocked insect unscrewed open and clattering. Rain comes on the way bees start at the back of the throat. CONNIE Poleax, mattock, a stepped wedge sunk into chocolate earth de‐creating in the rain, blue and clattering tarps over the skeletons. A dense matting of cars in a farmer’s field, roasted corn and doughnuts and daughters in the smoke the straight road up to the memorial. ERANA Tuzla, years on; linear, heavy rain on the day of; recently uncovered bodies are boxed for reburial, prayers trying to breathe in the cold rain, you find yourself in a line, not a grapevine dance, coffins handed hand to hand overhead on their way to fresh graves. The worm smell, an open vowel in the rain. You drink rain like a turkey, pull from the crowd, get higher for the view, a back road, forestry or contractor – Connie stumbles into a mass grave. CONNIE Slipping to my knee in the giant tire rut, this high, shrewdly obscure, this site from which... Slip – into – the pit, as many corpses as they could pull from it in time for the memorial, the rest, remain. I leave the dead my watch and stick. Climb up, an inverse root; turn myself in, to the Sea Bees. (Lulu perseverates, and continues through the scene that follows.) Burnt Umber 1/19/10 21
LULU Edina Ahmetasevic, Adnan Beganovic, Asmir Bakalovic, Indira Boric, Alma Brguljak, Sanja Cajic, Almasa Cerimovic, Amir Dapa, Razija Dedovic, Suzana Dusic ‐ 14, Amir Duzel, Senada Hasanovic, Edin Hodzic, Unidentified, Adnan Hujdurovic, Sandro Kalesic, Franc Kantor, Damir Kurbasic, Vesna Kurtalic, Pera Marinovic, Sulejman Mehanovic, Edin Mehmedovic, Amira Mehinovic, Edisa Memic, Savan Mustacevic, Selma Nuhanovic, Fahrudin Ramic, Nedim Rekic, Edhem Sarajlic, Nihad Sisic, Asim Slijepcevic, Ilinka Tadic, Mustafa Vukovic… Man on his own (Jack, Erana, and Lulu.) JACK O Christ of the Pigs. O backwards radio. LULU Brew beer from lard, raisins and Wonder Bread. ERANA When she denies him the tools of stupor, when she has me go around and post his driver’s license in the local bars, he composts in a pink plastic washbasin and is so patient. JACK (A toast.) May the wound always be fresh, may the cut always be open. And the frogs are purged from the streets with lye from hoses. Mamama (Erana and Mamama in Mamama’s kitchen.) ERANA There are worms in the bread. MAMAMA And serpents burst from the drains of the sea ERANA I piss red into a paper cup The telephone rings I grow up MAMAMA A sea monster eats Erana, and no papers for my tobacco. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 22
ERANA Cigarette snake Smoke is starlight I see bones of missing mother In the shape of smoke tonight (Connie smokes in the dark. Grandma washes dishes.) Wash dishes by dropping them down a hill; they smash there behind the plate factory; steep hill where the misfires and thin lips, the belt‐jumpers and bubble‐
walled are dumped; it is a mountain of clay razors. MAMAMA Send Lulu. ERANA Raw beans and cigarette ash You survive the knives your rivers wash Honeybee your buzzard home Your teeth are not your own See my heart shift in poverty See my heart shift in poverty Lead you by the elbow Lead you by the hair You are a clay star breaking A fish twisting in the air Someday our teeth will be fixed Then all our shoes are wrong A fast of ashes on a broken plate We can’t stay long (Erana leaves. Jack, Lulu and Erana stay awake, in separate rooms. Mamama watches from her window, propping her head on a pillow.) MAMAMA Cold. ERANA Mamama puts a – MAMAMA Puts a pillow on the radiator by the window by her bed and looks waiting for all the lights to go out in the house across the hump‐buckled asphalt street. The house is Burnt Umber 1/19/10 23
very tiny; the house across the street is where Connie and her family live. Connie is in the eastern theater of strategic operations. ERANA She pulls herself up – (Mamama looks out the window.) MAMAMA Up breathing in, plump the pillow, sigh and bring head to watch more, pillow slips – above my eye is cut. ERANA Cut and a narrow flat ribbon of blood comes down the left side of her face. MAMAMA Christ is so thin And the window is so thin The woman with TB cannot draw the tobacco in And it’s too late now not to begin The cream of the queens. ERANA, CONNIE, LULU, MAMAMA I am a nobody I am a small rope A tiny ladder The tail end A leaf. Jack Courts Lulu (Jack takes Lulu to a bar.) JACK Do you want French fries? Get the girl some French fries. LULU They haven’t had French fries here in many, many years. JACK Do you want to put on the jukebox? Here’s money for the – LULU The jukebox disturbs me. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 24
JACK We’ll just take it easy, then. We’ll just take our time. LULU Tell me what autistic is. JACK I would rather talk about these piles of dead bodies. LULU Why? JACK Because it is very sad. LULU Autism is sad. JACK I don’t know shit about autism. LULU What do you know about dead bodies? JACK Very sad. Let us be careful about genocide, it’s yesterday’s word. It sounds so serious. Serious is different from sad. They were caught up in war crimes, reprisal killings, and some very bad, very creative imagery. The symptomology overall adds up to suicide, and then – there are arguments on behalf of that. It’s where thinking is moving. Dear. Don’t let your sadness be caught up in politics. Suicide, suicide, suicide: sad, sad, sad. LULU Good night, apple. (Crossing; pause.) There is a slave inside my face; it does whatever you tell it to. (She leaves.) Erana on her own LULU Erana on her own. A Michaelmas grease pit. She goes to see – The sea bears Burnt Umber 1/19/10 25
ERANA The community college. LULU The industrial bakery ERANA The streets themselves, condoms and air raid sirens. LULU Looking for the woman to get the book on nursing chemistry back from, she leaves maggot path. As she lives, she makes a termite hill. ERANA To see people as dinosaurs, the hove‐back temporal, a turned away hump of flesh in heavy clothes that don’t close properly, this woman’s lost seal on the spit valves, the spent waters. MAMAMA Afraid that she too will wear two shoes on each foot will use cut gloves for socks, that she too will have loose tobacco in the sweat creases of her throat, small and smaller in the huddle of discard, abandon. LULU She is married by benzene ring, jewel broken from its setting, ion gone to radical. MAMAMA TB and smoke. LULU In hunt for the blue librarian down the smoke streets, the salt and ash of ice weather and recovery programs, coffee urns like turbines in the rhythm windows, her aloneness the binding place; night windows until the lights go off inside; she and the night behind reflected. And electrical nature is bright, hard, a pupil a pulpit literate by lightning, the chemistry book the gospel from the church of St. Famille. ERANA Connie clean as a knife a star. MAMAMA Sleeps with her head on her fists in the library. When she wakes, the man reading next to her has left a tooth by her elbow. She: a puppet controlled by breath. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 26
LULU All seas have anchors all anchors chains all life is in chains all mercy suffers if it is merciful. All seas fall. Falls and – ERANA What so what so what about it what about it MAMAMA Lulu comes home. ERANA Lulu. MAMAMA They wind up – they wind up peaceful, their bad night contributing nothing to the height or depth of the ocean or the rivers that feed it. The sister’s sheet is theater curtain. LULU A snake is there but does not bite. A dog smells our blood and the snake kills it. ERANA Everyone elsewhere, Lulu will be hit by a milk truck on the way back in from wandering one night. She is thrown to a curb. She nearly loses an eye. LULU (Perseverating.) Ed Adams, Greg Alexander, Howard Barrens, George Hawkins, Edward Howard, Billy Hudson, Andrew C Jackson, hands raised, running from his burning house, George Jeffery, Ed Lockard, Joe Miller, Unidentified man, S.H. Pierce, Sam Ree, M.M. Sandridge, R.N. Selzer, Lewis Shelton, Cauley Walker, Elsie Walker, Henry Walker, John Wheeler… Connie goes to war MAMAMA (To Erana.) My daughter is a paratrooper. She is a Golden Eagle. She’s in Europe. (Pulling ingredients together for cookies.) And behold a woman in the city, which was a sinner. Seven demons cast. (Seven demons are cast out of Connie.) CONNIE (Her demons.) I hold none of these. Floor seats. Cigarettes by the pack. Floor length. My own cup. The jailhouse break with the roundhouse kick. The Troubadour Poets for extra credit. Sock monkey. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 27
Burn rubber. The Rose Bowl Parade. Oatmeal cookies two kinds of oats two kinds of raisins tablespoon molasses. “Ersatz” – the word and the option. Banana‐seat bicycle, streamers streaming. Firmness of flesh; of solstice, equinox. I hold none of these. The joy of repetitive games with meaningless outcomes. “Coral” – the word and dollhouse color. The PIL box set in the round metal can. FM. Beveled edge. Billable hours. Network connection. Open toe. Look at me. Ink. I hold: 8 track, one cigarette, AM, onionskin manual typewriter second language spelling error. I am not ready for the birth of this child she is 7 and I still am not ready for the birth of this child. Without my seven demons I have: ERANA Caramel in her mouth, stumble, leaves her shoe. JACK Climbing out of the grave, Connie remembers her father. CONNIE Climbing Guadalupe, stationary striations in the sky, father in lead, 12, jet drops net of roar. Legs burn, trailhead to base; catch rhythm at the switchbacks. Then I taste bitter almonds and sweet raisins. Then I hear the angel. Then I smell anise. Tired and happy. Summiting; tent’s up, twilight. Night, roasted maize, a cap of brandy, Hailstorm plays his flute. At 12, I know his news, father quietly to the fire with Hail, about someone’s bees and his love for the people who keep them, manzanita burns to perfect white clay. On my back, my first turning, my first turning away, in hope, from the earth. I saw – and then I saw my first satellite, a star unstuck and drifting, air‐perfect and heaven‐immediate. My father: the cancer, the gun slinging racist, sleeps next to his artillery sergeant on one side of the pit, me on the other, rimming the fading fire’s hum. On the back of fossilized monsters, in the dry archive of the lost and horrible seas of the ancient world, a kind of phosphor ties up every tree. Contrails sublime and satellites wipe. Robert, with cancer, is ash from the insides out. MAMAMA Lulu wanders off, gets lost on a terrible planet. LULU In my suit of lights. You had me dead to rights Burnt Umber 1/19/10 28
Night’s a bullfight, paso doble And all passes by serene Black the pins the pricks of light The milk the leak the jar to carry the leak Snake bread stone fish nouns nouns, the water We are your sons and daughters In my suit of lights Planets come and go Angels leave their bodies and Ashes fall A nighttime game of blood and turbines Entropy and hopeful hearts combine In my suit my boast and bruit I wait a while, drought‐river root Jack’s Affair (Jack has sex.) ERANA Jack: making love to something invisible, something dead. Behind a metal door hidden by overgrowth in the abandoned glass factory. How did he end up there? On the way back home from the bar. It’s where you piss when you’re cited out for drunk driving and your car is impounded for too many tickets and you have to walk far. A yellow and black beetle on her bare arm. You almost go to eat it and it unscrews itself into a black mobile clatter. You’re in her mouth. JACK This is a good idea. ERANA You are making sounds like Sea Planet. You cannot go to the ground, for all the broken glass, but you have each other’s names like broken glass, and you wrap these names in newspaper. Hands open from the cuts, sinking. LULU As content as a cow at the milking. JACK I will call a martyr I mean a cab and meet you for a cup of coffee teaspoon of blood I mean bone I mean pus I mean I would rather have some time alone. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 29
I have a secret wife. She lives through a crawlspace in a wonderful world. She is deaf. She doesn’t sleep with me. In my perfect world, I’m a celibate woman. ERANA The first time I saw you, and was so very lonely. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 30
Six (Six is one morning.) LULU Here, now, flow to fall; time to come home. Phone call. Grave slip. Hit by a truck. Fire. (Early; sun isn’t up yet. Lulu wanders home. Erana sleeps off dopamine in an inappropriate place. Jack sorts himself out after the glass factory. Connie listens to the satellites. Mamama wakes and prays.) ERANA Everyone looking elsewhere; cow of a truck; mad as a bee or a boy with a sword; her eye a Little Wonder with a misremembered scene at one end. (Lulu is hit by a milk truck outside Mamama’s house and thrown to the side of the road; eye damaged. Then, the same scene again on different terms.) MAMAMA Milk truck, candle house. Lulu has chapped lips. (Hit and damage.) She is a drawing of a girl, made by Christ when he was seven. (Lulu is replaced by a child’s drawing of Lulu. Mamama retrieves the picture and takes it into her house.) I have these letters somewhere in a box, in a bag somewhere, somewhere on my person. What spills into what, how you get it back and what you can’t; the story – CONNIE Lost to us in the deep and dry well of my mother’s mind. MAMAMA Ah me. This year Thanksgiving on the moon. (She goes home. Lulu suffers by the roadside alone.) JACK Mamama goes to sleep. The things that fall: bean pods from the thread lines, peppers from the stalk. She has been without tobacco for 45 years but can still taste it when she exhales, without alcohol for 40 but is still dizzy when her head goes back to her pillow. Down trashed in the least of this fucking senile, autistic age: to be damaged – as an act not a symptom, impairment as personal mode, the hand you use, the horse you ride, a skeleton of torque. You faithless fuck, the world is present to you, love intensive, and you persevere without patience, you hang in air without a cross, your idiot rising has no import, lacking certain setting. Mamama settles her Burnt Umber 1/19/10 31
head to the pillow, mouth making smoking motions like a baby goat at the tit. She lies down in Alzheimer’s and wakes in flames. (Lulu sleeps on Mamama’s floor.) ERANA Grandmother is in a separate, smaller house. Grandmother sings – ERANA, MAMAMA Bumblebee, beehouse, treehouse, empty bowl. Stars and garters, it’s cold. ERANA She goes to wash her hands and face, she is ready for breakfast for her and Lulu, let’s go. Three egg western, home made Tassajara hot with sweet butter and honey, hand‐peeled fruit salad. Coffee… No. Bite of bread, a drink of water. ERANA, MAMAMA I forgot to buy bread. ERANA And the water won’t flow, it’s dark outside, five in the winter, there is a crawl space under the house, she Jack Sprats a candle under, crawling on her back over cinderblock chips, mice‐and‐spider pee. She lights Lulu’s baptism candle and goes below to warm the pipes, candle sliding on a plate, and the stove clicking and clicking its flint to find the gas for the boil. Paid the gas this time! The candle is the sunrise in her head, she locks her stare as she slides, as she candles the pipes, she holds her eyes on the light, this gem of day, bride of sleep astounded by the shine; flame vertical, as single as a yellow sword, extends, flame reaches the floorboards from underneath the pine. Tar spark floats into the gas the flint couldn’t catch, the house is on fire, and Grace is consumed by carnivorous light, a meal of ash, her clay in waste. She is buried in fire each flame a page of the Bible. (A model of Mamama’s house catches fire. Erana pulls the drawing out.) Lulu was in there, recovering from the truck. I was coming home from missed bus. Pull you, put you together. (Erana assembles Lulu, converting the drawing to a person.) I’m not making you beautiful. CONNIE In the shadow of the world a world. Mamama carries Lulu. It is all she can remember. MAMAMA In the shadow of the world a world. CONNIE Lulu can demonstrate memory of nothing, even things she’s been told over and over. Burnt Umber 1/19/10 32
MAMAMA Erana tells her everything. Lulu is everything. We remember nothing. ERANA There is a world inside the world that will not crack. MAMAMA This is where the girl lives with her sister, walking around a secret world. CONNIE They are in the eye, sealed shut. She protects her fontanel. MAMAMA Back after discharge, papers are filed. Jack keeps Lulu. LULU Connie goes back to Oklahoma City with Erana. ERANA Lulu lived through a crash, pirate eye. CONNIE Mamama lost in a fire. LULU Morning and Jack’s head is a lantern. You can barely see it because it’s light out, but there’s a flame in his throat. Connie’s scoring synthetic dopamine for Erana in Texas. They brought me to where they were holding some of us. When the time there was over they said they found me. Witness. You can tell me in prayer that the sun is shining, but I can tell you for the first time in his life Christ can’t find country music on the radio. MAMAMA I see a garden, I see widowed Eve plow the field with the pelvis of her dead husband. I see yellow bones burning in a brass thurible. Moon is made of metal looking out on the stone world and all is made of death, in the age of death. LULU (Lulu washes her red hair. It turns perfectly white.) Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana Erana eirene umin eirene umin eirene umin eirene umin ERANA ET AL Snakes are in the pumpkins Alkali in the wine So many dead a day Thank God it’s February and you are going blind Burnt Umber 1/19/10 33
Your head’s a crumpled pumpkin Your tongue’s an IOU Every snake you bleed’s a hook And the book you took, Like cinnamon, is overdue Shoo the pilgrim mouth tonight Heaven’s everywhere Let this be Just you and me Messiah, lying there ‘Ah me’ in Broken Arrow ‘Oh woe’ in Chickasha What can I do that you don’t know Or give that you can’t say? The End Burnt Umber 1/19/10 SHAPE by Erik Ehn 1
SHAPE (Cordelia McClain) (A small, artificial village; houses scaled down, but at least one of them is large enough for two people together to crouch in. The conceit is that each house is on a small raft in an artificial lake in Ambrose Park, Brooklyn, 1900 – a seam of open space in a heavily industrialized section of Bushwick.) One: Brooklyn Moon (Dusk. Moonrise. She tends to the garden, the chickens, the care of the house.) SURVIVOR A shape A small house Fairyland Fairies in fairy houses by the fairy fountain. Traces Traces Speech of the fairies: untranslated Fairy riots and Fairy fire (A journalist approaches by boat. Notes.) JOURNALIST Then. Ambrose Park sunset smell the cooking, the materials from which they are made – the houses. 500 of them, New Fairy City. They come from – they – the mass of them – they have soft voices. Fire handed fairies live in houses as they would in Fairyland. SURVIVOR And the salt of the killer moon down on it. The madman at the piano of the night sky. We sing our little fairy songs. JOURNALIST Billy and Cordelia McClain are married. SURVIVOR They were singer‐dancers, also writer‐producer in vaudeville days. This was in vaudeville times as they were valued as dancers because they all fly and their melodies could destroy human will. He was a diamond king, the diamond king of all the land, and the moon fell on his diamonds and gold. They were fairies. Shape 1/18/10 2
He was arrested once for wearing so many diamonds. How could he have come by them honestly? (Night falls. The journalist comes to the house. Cordelia retreats inside.) JOURNALIST A journalist. Oh, you didn’t know? This should answer all your questions. I am a journalist. Now you see? CORDELIA (To Billy, inside.) This is no journalist. At least no newspaper man. JOURNALIST Fair homes – JOURNALIST, CORDELIA They live in/We live in – (Through the following list, Cordelia makes the Journalist at home.) CORDELIA Stained glass windows made of colored leaves sealed in beeswax. JOURNALIST Renovated, themed, small restaurant buildings, shaped like milk bottles, coffee cups, hot dogs, dogs, harps. SURVIVOR Melodrama is a woodchipper, tragedy is a tree. We lived in trees, loaded in, in iron pots. JOURNALIST At various sizes. The birthday girl’s pink frosted doughnut. CORDELIA The other side of things. Ladles. A metal flap. BILLY The passenger sides of derelict vehicles. CORDELIA I would like to sing. JOURNALIST You have a beautiful wife. Shape 1/18/10 3
BILLY I know. She’s – Beautiful. JOURNALIST Yes! BILLY You’re drunk already? JOURNALIST Well. Who can say? CORDELIA I like to wear low cut dresses. JOURNALIST You do? CORDELIA Generally I can’t at night, because of the chill. But it’s warm, now. JOURNALIST It’s warm, usually, where you live? CORDELIA Unbearable. Unless you love it. BILLY Sing. CORDELIA Fairy décolletage Wearing moon‐gold from l’age d’or Painting light with sweet How many of us on the head of a pin? I forget Just sew You will know what the tailors know Or gods stitching oceans to la plage Absence, absence Décolletage JOURNALIST You’re a terrible flirt, Cordelia. I mean, you fill me with terror. Shape 1/18/10 4
SURVIVOR The journalist, against his will and with no memory, finds himself back in the boat, drifting away from the house among houses that floats in the artificial lake, on the same grounds where Buffalo Bill just had his show. CORDELIA Honey, my feet – my feet all day. SURVIVOR Billy, an amateur osteopath, works on her feet. BILLY Come here, my little dove. JOURNALIST And her feet, for a moment, are two soft doves, frightened, but calming, in the good doctor’s hands. CORDELIA I feel I can’t trust you with information about myself. BILLY What do you mean? CORDELIA I tell you things, and you repeat them. BILLY So you know I’m listening. CORDELIA Repeat them outside my control. To other people. BILLY I don’t understand. CORDELIA Telling that man my birthday. BILLY I’m not going to try and understand. CORDELIA Surprising me with birthdays, with parties. That’s my business. Shape 1/18/10 5
BILLY Baby, you’re an industry. CORDELIA That’s not even what I’m saying. BILLY I know. That’s not what you’re saying. CORDELIA What am I saying? BILLY “I don’t trust you.” JOURNALIST She’s back in her shoes. She has another show tonight. CORDELIA That should answer your questions. BILLY Do you need to trust me? To do what you do for me? CORDELIA No. And it costs me, it costs you, what we have to pay out to love each other without trust. And eventually there will be nothing. But tonight’s… nice. JOURNALIST Fairy land is dying out. Is a healing blister. A forgotten sibling. SURVIVOR They put out the cooking fire with a pitcher of water. The steam climbs the moonlight. They, the star performers, Cordelia and Billy, make their way to the field set aside for the opening parade. Then the show is over. The night is dark and full of ladders to nowhere. The residual small church‐like stink from the retired gas lamps. CORDELIA There is sand in my eyes when I wake up at three. I can’t find you. JOURNALIST Houses made out of materials that will melt in the rain, that can’t keep the words out. Shape 1/18/10 6
CORDELIA Cannot sleep and this coffee will not wake me. Honey, I would love you better. Go to sleep. JOURNALIST The walls are transparent but without the feature of being able to see through them. They are cheap. Nothing. SURVIVOR And then she changes shape. Something she undergoes. JOURNALIST Hands ruthless at her eyes, aghast at being awake. BILLY (Watching her go.) She has beautiful lungs – deep and clear. This is from the days when she played lacrosse. She grows furious at boredom, poles her house to the shore, and runs and runs through the moon‐hurt park, a ficelle spinning away from fairy land. And she flies. She flies around the chimney pots, flies until the stars above are larger than gaslights, the flight expensive to her, suffering her flight, the small parties blinking out, recession of the grand entertainment. Ties hair in knots. Makes crowns of duck down and hide them in pillows. Can name all the trees she passed, and does, even though she is frantic. Alder, aspen, chestnut, linden, sugar maple. JOURNALIST Everything comes to their table from sacks and cases, everything on their backs from piles. SURVIVOR Pushed around by time, they alternate between the labor of swinging clock hands and the ennui of the post that pivots them through their serial erasures, the waiting at the heart of wasting. At the center of the watch there is no thinking. There is a post. JOURNALIST She is in charge of other‐world payroll. She pays the birds their wages. SURVIVOR Making tiny citrus cookies for the butterfly nuns. Shape 1/18/10 7
BILLY Starts the daemons up, queing the invisible. JOURNALIST And still she manages the finest agents in her shampoo; she grinds and stirs the ingredients herself. But the stagnant water always leaves her sticky. They are where they are. CORDELIA (Landing.) I guess this is what I’m doing now. I guess I’m being carried along. SURVIVOR She brushes water so the waves will be smooth. This poor old water. She’s in charge of that. CORDELIA (Entering the house, quietly) I cannot live by guessing. I will make a change. BILLY Her vast supply of power, useless? Or being learned. The best speech ever given, before the language is common. (He rolls over and sleeps.) CORDELIA Stopped on the way back from upstate, where he was buying antiques with which to dress the village, the police went ahead and arrested him, not believing that a creature so outside the economy could legitimately own so many diamonds. The newspaper man – YOU! – called him the Diamond King. (A reenactment of the arrest.) BILLY What? OFFICER What what? BILLY What is it, sir? SURVIVOR The officer could tell by the way light – moonlight – passed through Billy’s eyes, gathered and intensified in his head, and shot back out, that he was a Dryad. Maybe Dryad/Niad. He didn’t know. But definitely more grim than human. BILLY The handcuffs have lost their minds. They are behaving in most unusual ways. Shape 1/18/10 8
CORDELIA So he wears his diamonds now, especially at night, when they shine the most. SURVIVOR He was stopped with birdcages, an artificially distressed, miniature cask of whiskey, some once hilarious taxidermy, a “literary assistant,” and a bad head cold. CORDELIA He changes shape. The diamonds nearly slide off him, but he moves with liberal, almost fevered speed, as a happy thought eels through a milieu of fear. SURVIVOR We live far from home in a floating village built to resemble our own on an artificial lake in Ambrose Park, Brooklyn, 1900. I will tell you how it ends for the fairies. We are paid to sing their songs scored to a key the neighborhood can understand, and to perform simulations of our sustaining tasks – cooking, cleaning – as if we are living our lives at will. There are 500 of us, subsisting, in the carnival museum. JOURNALIST Shoveling lime into the latrines. (The boat is at the shore.) She sleeps with the blinds up for the light, nighttime, for that unpossessed, unconscious little light, and they always wake up early. (Morning. The Journalist continues to write from a distance. Cordelia and Billy are stiff, after a restless night.) CORDELIA I would really almost rather live off the ginkgo and acorn, saving per diem for the occasional very thick steak and cigar. Better these than the adjusted ingredients the producers provide. If dreams had been told the way recipes were, and one were forced to dream only the repeated, edited, and cleaned‐up versions, one would go mad. As now we are going hungry in our houses on the lake. SURVIVOR We are starving. To death. BILLY She hurt her head flying. She cannot play banjo for a while. JOURNALIST Then, surprisingly, daylight comes in one morning and the room is empty – New Fairy City, abandoned. All the chickens are dead, and the inspectors crunch the bones, were they step, gingerly. The floating houses knock, a drum played by an old, old man. Shape 1/18/10 9
SURVIVOR The print in their secret journals get smaller and smaller until – Their escape would have to be on loudspeaker to be heard at all. It takes more than the arrest to drive them away, it takes the natural history of the germ in the event of the whole culture at the Estrangement Pavilion. They go to Europe. Writing shows, translating into French and German. Where estrangement is the premise, and not buried as a lie. Still they are hated. Still they are homesick. But, for an unsustainable little while, the place is as spectacle as they are. Two Bird CORDELIA Yes, and I wish happiness did not make one so fat. FRENCH JOURNALIST You are very beautiful. BILLY If you will excuse me, I have the horses to rehearse. (He leaves.) CORDELIA That good home cooking. FRENCH JOURNALIST (Noting the abruptness of Billy’s departure.) You are working, yes? This playing is hard work. CORDELIA He’s trained as a lawyer. FRENCH JOURNALIST A lawyer? He is a practicing lawyer? CORDELIA Yes. So he knows when to get out. He knows “nothing.” FRENCH JOURNALIST He knows nothing? CORDELIA He knows “nothing” as a subject. He knows when there is nothing left. (Pause.) Excuse me too, there’s a show tonight. Shape 1/18/10 10
BILLY He leaves, nearly backing out of the small cabin, deferring. Her shape is changing. FRENCH JOURNALIST I am therefore leaving, Madame, grateful for – BILLY The disaster of – FRENCH JOURNALIST Some nudity. (Cordelia’s Maid helps her get ready for the show. Billy’s Butler helps Billy.) MAID Scars on her body. BUTLER Fairies scar easily. Actually, they don’t but they are often scarred. MAID This is a feature of the prurience – looking at us. Naked. (Their hidden wings are strapped down, atrophying, melting.) FRENCH JOURNALIST So many words. MAID In Europe, where the architects and builders of the factories and castles were all fairies six million years ago, Billy and Cordelia continue to dance. FRENCH JOURNALIST Coffee‐sick. BILLY More dancing. More jokes. (His jokes.) 1, 2, 3. 4 – 5! Ester Easter Ether Either. The forlorn whoohoo! A run on cotton, and monkey take the minion! Not for nothing ever want the steeple echo bobcat. You with me? I can – if the ragged pale‐coat plan! CORDELIA These jokes, stolen from so many shows, told so many times… (They speak to each other quietly, as they perform a series of routines. Cordelia strips.) Shape 1/18/10 11
BILLY They’re stealing my eyes, turtle. CORDELIA May they find a happy home. BILLY You steal me. CORDELIA I don’t want to make room for the future by laying our present out for theft, hoping the right heart robs us. We can work. BILLY You love me. CORDELIA Not like that I don’t. Not like “I forgive you” for being old and thoughtless. I love you like – I will do nothing else. To forgive somebody, you have to return to them and I’m never gone. I don’t forgive you. I am so with you I’m lonely half the time – so with you I can’t see you. Have to wait for my shape to change so I can turn around and look. FRENCH JOURNALIST (In the audience, writing a review.) They speak with a thick and very specific fairy accent which we will not attempt to imitate here. The waning microtone solfège. CORDELIA (Her dances.) The rescapé The exile The refugio The wounded nation The forget me The fucking take it I hoped it would last And so we’ll embrace, And the deceit in the night: its hope, And the stalling day: its demented obligations, Fail in the end. My dresses move, Liquid, to the pale wide plane SURVIVOR Sometimes you’re a pivot Sometimes a hand Shape 1/18/10 12
The fruit or the pit In fairyland The constant is: Always in use. A persistent state, Running, and always late. “Rope” is another word for – MAID She was only an hour late to the party after the show, but she missed: Alligator wrestling. BUTLER Her husband’s sweet tryst. MAID Haywire horse‐show. BUTLER A wonderful crème brule. MAID A spontaneous translation of one of her own songs into French, sung by the shiny human her husband was making love to. BUTLER A train ballet: the sliding paths of four freights coordinated to a grand pattern. MAID Somewhere in heaven, the ghost of her grandmother being fitted for new eyeglasses. FRENCH JOURNALIST They live in a room from which six corpses have just been removed, with a typewriter from which all the consonants have fallen out. When she cried or he cried, hearing it from elsewhere in the house: the Birds of North America. SURVIVOR They are suffering a disease of the unity, and are sweating it in the cure of loss; a dysfunction in that faculty that makes a person whole, guided to painful remaking through an experience of being wholly lost. BILLY Can you believe what the – Shape 1/18/10 13
CORDELIA Stop. BILLY I’m trying to – CORDELIA Stop. BILLY Then what? CORDELIA Stopping all the way down. BILLY It is the same here. Europe. CORDELIA The mouth is blind, the eye is deaf, and I will never know. BILLY That’s it then. You’ve left. CORDELIA No, not yet. The tour. Hm. We’ve got a lot to do. MAID A flock of birds, each bird hollow paper; they are setting small pots of fire under them, floating them. (She leaves.) SURVIVOR She went then to Florida. CORDELIA (To Survivor.) There is a good circuit there. SURVIVOR And a Globe Theater. CORDELIA (To an unseen friend.) I write plays, Laverne. Shape 1/18/10 14
SURVIVOR It takes him a while to get to Tulsa. Worth three good postcards and the rest is silence. BILLY Good. Good. In all the way. SURVIVOR There were special pillows for their heads… but that was so humans wouldn’t have to use them later. (Billy, dressing with his Butler.) BILLY What’s a kestrel? SURVIVOR Europe was a long, long elevator. BUTLER I don’t know. BILLY You’re quick with that. We know more than we think. BUTLER A kid of seabird, I think. BILLY Sea‐bird? We’re not near the sea. BUTLER You’re always near the sea, more or less. BILLY Less. BUTLER Never out of the risk of drowning. BILLY No, wait, it’s a – (The Butler is gone.) SURVIVOR Tried really challenging himself with a complicated version of Solitaire, but forgot the rules and was back to words. Shape 1/18/10 15
Interlude Billy’s Solo Act BILLY I didn’t do anything, honest I didn’t. I’m too little. Won’t you let me go? Is that cake? Suppose you find out help yourself my dear. To see if anything’s been stolen always send for the professor; you can always get it back. I am not the Eustace Applebee I was when I stroked the Yale crew to victory. Colonel Loring to see you Madam. And the colonel is raving something awful Mrs. Drew. I beg your pardon, sir, your aunt she wants to see you. Mr. Applebee to see you Miss Drew. Yes ma’am. (He eats flowers.) Oh you’ve been very bad again. I do like you to be good. I like you because you’ve never had any father or mother. I like you and I want you to be good I want you to be good for my sake. Miss, I’d be ashamed to be good. Have you kids seen a suspicious looking character around here? I beg your pardon. Why, I was sitting there attending to my own business and if you don’t mind I’ll continue tending to my own business. Well you’re supposed to be on the stage aren’t you? Yes, why yes, thank you very much for drawing my attention to that. I was going to make my entrance through the exit. Stupid of me, wasn’t it? You’re Professor Applebee. I’ve known who you were all along. Oh no I’m playing in a show here. Everything’s all right I just want to talk to these gentlemen. (A play within.) Well you’re looking much better dear. In a day or two you’ll be as strong as a lion. No papa, you needn’t pretend. I know you know. What? That I’m going away and soon. Now baby you mustn’t think these things. I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t out of bed by tomorrow, playing in the garden there. No, papa, the angels told me. They told me last night. My head, it hurts so. She’s going to take me to heaven. Now, you’ll feel better when you’ve had a nap. I am cheerful papa. Isn’t this beautiful? I’ll miss you. You’re not going to leave me my pet, not for a long, long time. I can see those great gates: they’re made of pearl and they’re opening wide and there are angels. They are calling for me. I’m coming. I’m coming. It’s over praise the lord it’s over. (An epilogue.) Wait! Don’t go. We have a treat for you tonight. Our entire company, including our tiny little star, has prepared a celebration for the first anniversary of our show. Out of our land has come a new form of entertainment. Our company wants to be the first to present it to you, if it is your pleasure. Come and meet me in the moonlight. Shape 1/18/10 16
Three: Tulsa and La Villa Wind (A fantasy interview. Billy and Cordelia are old.) BILLY Commercial transatlantic air flight had not been invented yet. CORDELIA So we took a steamer. BILLY They knew who we were. CORDELIA Very respected in the dance community. BILLY And what we could do. CORDELIA So twice we had to fly off the boat and push. “Respected.” BILLY The seagulls thought we were crazy. CORDELIA But we were burned up. BILLY And our ashes fly separate. CORDELIA So I think we better stop talking. BILLY Let go of my hand. CORDELIA I have my love, I have. JOURNALIST Each of her words so apt, every time she moved her tongue: cake. BILLY Walked into a room in an old house and birds flew up and out the windows. Is the whole country an old living room? Shape 1/18/10 17
MAID She is in plays. She writes plays. The Lover’s Confusion. A Trip to Fairytown. SURVIVOR She is hanged in La Villa Florida, 1923, and her body is burned. MAID Her agency: reprobate as the scripts were, she is pushing writing in the language allowed her. SURVIVOR But the writing in her journal changes, changes right under her. It takes her a long time to write, and her hands fall asleep. What her hands dream, appears in the text. MAID She is changing, changing, changing. BUTLER He is in Tulsa in 21 when their Wall Street is set on fire and the historical record is torn out. But he stays in Europe two years after she goes to Florida. MAID Light through the trees strobing fast at the train windows. BILLY (He’s imagining postcards to Cordelia, from Europe.) Well, I just started out driving. MAID She returns to America, early, to Florida. And it turned into something else. SURVIVOR In letters to the newspapers, he denied separation. In letters to her, tried to be merry and legitimate about staying. MAID A notebook thrown out a train window. New notebooks. BILLY There were witnesses to my departure from the hotel. I was making good time – so why not! I made a race of it. Dove, I wound up setting the speed record fro the trip from Paris to Monte Carlo! Shape 1/18/10 18
BUTLER Monte Carlo: “I gamble my watch and chain.” And he loses his watch and chain. “I gamble my dappled mare.” And he loses his dappled mare. It is well past midnight in the Danger Building, and the trains have long stopped running. CORDELIA (In her journal.) Sleepers are birds, and sleep is the wind, which is why my hands so often write about flight, and why, ultimately, I return to America. My husband returns, slightly later, because it’s the last act he can legally perform, and there was money to make in the hustings. My old man, he is a fool. MAID She worked the hand fan. Pumping that hand fan, her eyes were screwed down into a motor‐mount. BUTLER The mail planes buzzing. That means Billy and Cordelia – are growing old CORDELIA (In remote dialogue with Billy.) Where will you go? Don’t gamble with the mystics. Their dice have too many sides and you’ll never hit your number. You’re going to gamble with the mystics. BILLY I’m going to Tulsa. CORDELIA Like I say. That will work? BILLY This is a lot to talk about, given that it’s till my intention to deny all this. CORDELIA In for a penny. BILLY (On the allure of Oklahoma.) Not only is the ink still wet on the charters and constitutions, they ran out of ink halfway though and there’s work on the side of lore than can be managed. CORDELIA What work? BILLY Build a house out of cloud. Poison gold to kill a thief. And they don’t check documents prior to opening or after closing a business. There’s a newspaper there. Full of astronomy. Big picture writing. Shape 1/18/10 19
CORDELIA You’ve got a mind for business. Or you’ve got a cunning. And an appetite. You’ve got a snake for business. And an Adam. What you don’t have is an Eve. Not really. Good luck in building up a world. BILLY You like to be smart. CORDELIA Darling: keep up. BILLY Oh. Let’s go have dinner and talk about people as if there were any such thing as a third party in this hour of our exact disaster. JOURNALIST He moved to Tulsa, in 1914. He became part owner of the Tulsa Star. BILLY A kind of homeland or – Oklahoma is a territory, a thought. SURVIVOR When he returns to the states, and settles in Oklahoma, not Florida, it is plain they are apart. The intensity of fairy theatricals has passed. They are no longer stars. CORDELIA Cloud‐house has no nails. Billy lives in the Cloud House. Newspapers hopping down the printer’s belt. His ideas, making temporary structures in the air, travel together. Tulsa: A good way to make money. Bird rage. What from a distance seems like dueling flocks of red winged blackbirds is a city on fire. Ash lost track of him after the fire. Tulsa prided itself on keeping weak records anyhow. MAID She was dead three years after the fire. And he had lost touch with her. Touch. CORDELIA In Florida there is the Globe. It doesn’t look like the Globe in England but they sure put on crackerjack shows. MAID Ocean all around the state but not a thing moved. No principle of movement. Shape 1/18/10 20
SURVIVOR They hang her from a tree. Its leaves became literate. Wrote stories on each other’s dull limbs. A flowering tree. BUTLER So he left Oklahoma ash to make his way in Hollywood. Four: Lynching and Fire Flower (Cordelia is making a fragrant soup out of flowers.) BUTLER Diabetes causes his blood to bird – his heart to print rapid pages of itself, looking like a flower. MAID And her shape changes again. I cannot watch this. (The Maid, the Butler, and the Journalists leave. Billy and the Survivor remain with Cordelia. Billy’s trailer resembles the Ambrose cabin.) BUTLER Soon after the fire, he moved to Los Angeles. Fairies were already so few that they were played for nostalgia on the big screen. SURVIVOR Billy could cowboy He could sheriff and tycoon Spangle your donkey, put your hat on King Kong Drink like a freight train we don’t live long Jesus was a leprechaun Mary was a unicorn She didn’t know what to make of him When the singing babe was born Jesus was a selkie too Though the story’s seldom told Some say that he died too young Others he was born too old Jesus was a kung fu man Mary played the angel band Trumpets blow, the bad folks know The killing force of the open hand Shape 1/18/10 21
Billy could cowboy He could sheriff and tycoon Spangle your donkey, put your hat on King Kong Drink like a freight train He dies at noon (Speaking.) Fire at noon. Invisible. She died, flower at night, visible by return to moon. (The night of the lynching. Cordelia walks through a forest.) She became frightened that she was understanding the speech of birds. Her own melodies become much more like birdsong. CORDELIA God save us this is nice a nice place to be. Move past the dead parts of my brain. A lovely boy was stolen from me. I had kissed him but not so hard that he died from it. Now he is among the living, herding goats in the mountains. I worry sometimes that there is something wrong with my head, that the bad thing has crawled up there through my teeth. Look one sits alone as proud as a king. Pulling at my eyes. Up, up he climbs, away from everyone but not from me, he is mine Sleepy Heaven Sleepy Heaven Sleepy Heaven Sleepy Heaven I shan’t give you any more kisses or I might kiss you to death. They are sleepy in heaven Because In heaven they never sleep, They pray without ceasing They don’t want to miss anything Because Heaven’s everything is perfect. They are a little crazy and they are Over the world Shape 1/18/10 22
I have something better than milk, some travelers left half a bottle of wine behind. You have never tasted better. Yes I will kiss you if you give me the beautiful ring, yes that ring and no other. I am hanged, it is daytime, I am sober. Plenty radio; I don’t know how to boil it all down. I’m as sleepy as an angel. Have you broken silence yet? I kissed you when you were a child, kissed your mouth, now I kiss you on your toe and your heel, now you are mine you are mine you are mine. The constraints are simple and can’t be eased. I am the statement you are making about my shape. In heaven I will not sleep. I will be sleepy all the time. I will lose my mind. And will have heaven. Which you will not know until you are dead. Which however long it takes will be soon. And then all force will be gone. All will be where it needs to be, and radiant, light of the morningstar filling to the brim. Here are your eyes. I fished them up from the bottom of the lake, they shone so brightly, here take them back you will be able to see more clearly now; look down into the well. I cannot hear you. You will not be heard. We will bear you no grudge, and if only you had one single word you would be in heaven too. Many things have changed since we were children together, our souls as well as our bodies are not the same. My king is diamond; he is shining. I am the queen of walking around: I’m how that shining shows. Without ideas you are not a people, no royalty or revolution, only the flies. You know how to be sick. I do not want to make you my enemy. Soon I will be living so far away from here. (To Billy.) I have only the kindest memories of you, but I do not love you as I have learned now that a woman can love a man. I have never loved you in that way, you will have to accept that. Goodbye. For a great poet a great toothache. Flowering Peach Cherry Magnolia Hawthorne Shape 1/18/10 23
Dogwood Tulip Myrtle Plum Sourwood Redbud Jacaranda Scarlet Bean Sacred Pear I am hung from a flowering tree In La Villa Florida, 1923 Do you think this is a tragedy? SURVIVOR Drops her glasses. Lost her math. On her way to being lynched. But acute. Still learning. Professing. Though her speech guttered and proxied. Strong. Belted. Like Orion. Trailer fire. The flower is witness to the wind. BILLY Cordelia. I am burned alive in a trailer fire in Los Angeles in 1950. I am an old man. (She feeds him soup. They sit. They exit separately.) The End Shape 1/18/10 24
WILD NEGRO CHANTS AND DANCES In “Black America,” Brooklyn, May Be Seen the Fun­Loving Darky of Old Slavery Days. “Hi, dar! you black rascal, git out’n de gemmen’s way. Doan you see he wanter glt inter der cabin tu see yer ol daddy, wat’s wukin foah deah life?” The infantile black Georgian, failing to obey his mammy's word of command, was summarily removed from the doorway, and the reporter entered the cabin, and found old Joe hard at work mending a dilapidated pair of trousers that he had brought with him from the outskirts of Atlanta. He contemplates making an appearance in “Black America,” the new show that Nate Salsbury will open to‐day, at Ambrose Park, South Brooklyn, and he wants to look well. “Black America” will open this afternoon where the Wild West Show was last Summer. A dress rehearsal was given Thursday, when the various performances that will be given during the coming Summer were gone through with, and were found to be entertaining and of much educational value. The negro of the South is a distinct type. He has little in common with his Northern brother, and is therefore of much more interest, as some of the characteristics of slavery days still cling to him. These characteristics will be made familiar to the people of the North in “Black America.” The cotton fields, the negro cabins, the songs and dances of slavery days will be reproduced. There will be feats of jugglery, tightrope walking, and evolutions by ex‐
members of the Ninth United States cavalry, the crack colored troop that did such wonderful execution among the Indians at the time of the Pine Ridge massacre. All of the darkies are costumed as they were in plantation days “befo’ the wah,” and sing and dance with as much zest and abandon as they did in those times, when owned by kind and appreciative masters. Such singing has seldom been heard in the North, such dancing is as unusual here as it is unique. Solos sung with exquisite melody, and choruses, in which there are hundreds of voices, “that stir the listeners almost to tears,” mav be heard. It is impossible to listen to “America” as those 500 negroes sing it before the picture of Abraham Lincoln and observe their appeals to his mute but benign countenance, and not feel for the time being that he made a country for them of that which had for merely been but an abiding place. This is only one of their picture songs. The others are Gen. Grant, Gen. Sherman, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass. In their dances they go singly, in twos and in threes, and then all join in a negro revel that is beyond description. Old and young, male and female, all dance as inclined, and produce an effect that is wonderful. They dance the “heel and toe,” “flim flam,” Shape 1/18/10 25
“buck,” “wing,” and other dances to the music of their hands in rhythmic clapping and a low whistle that sounds like “a‐whip, a‐whip, a‐whip, a‐wee,” in a dull monotone. Their gracefulness and light, easy motion are wonderful, and are indicative of the untrammeled outdoor life that they have lived. “Black America” will present an opportunity to become familiar with plantation life to those of the North who belong to a generation to which the word slavery has but an indefinite and hazy meaning. It will show the labors that the negroes of slavery days engaged in, and the happy, careless life that they lived in their cabins after work hours were over. The melodies of the show are infectious, and will be found to exist at the cabin doors scattered throughout the grounds. The simplicity of their former life is strikingly portrayed, and their kindly family and neighborly affection is everywhere noticeable. The grounds will be opened every day at 11 o'clock A. M., and two performances will be given in the amphitheatre daily, lasting two hours. Published: May 25, 1895 Copyright © The New York Times * FUN FOR THE DARKIES Members of the Black America Show Enjoy the Bracing Heat. COTTON AND LOVE BLOOM TOGETHER Billy McClain and Mme. Cordelia, Prominent Singers and Cake Walkers Are the Aristocracy of Ambrose Park. The cotton field in Ambrose Park, South Brooklyn, has been thriving for the past few days. A Southern State could not have produced a more glorious condition of heat than the earth and air and all intermediate objects have seemed to give forth the last few days. Nature has combined with art to give “Black America” a proper setting. A Northern mind cannot appreciate the sad condition of Southern cotton suddenly transplanted into a region of cold and storms. There was danger of a corner in the cotton market if all the genuine fluffy cotton heads should fall before the inauspicious elements, and should have to be replaced by the cotton which grows in the North only in bales. But the heat of Memorial Day sent a reviving thrill of real plantation life all through the big park encampment. The cotton in the field lifted its numerous heads with renewed vigor, and if there was anything needed to inspire the Black Americans with a “down South befoh the wah” feeling, the weather gave it. Shape 1/18/10 26
But there has been little need of inspiration in the “quarters” on the park since the present residents settled down there, and 500 lively persons enjoy life very much. A fat black mammy, with a red handkerchief on her head, sits outside one of the little cabins, knitting; a dusky damsel, all in pale blue, makes a picture of herself standing in the square frame of an open cabin window, and she would be apt to have an overpowering effect upon any susceptible young men in the neighborhood. There are a great many men around, for there is a group of cabins over in the corner by the cotton field that is devoted to bachelor quarters only. The musical beaus of the plantation play upon all sorts of musical instruments, from the Jews harp and banjo to the violin, while the cavalrymen, genuine soldiers of the 9th United States Cavalry, show off their fine‐figures and brass buttons without regard to the feelings of the dusky damsels whose shattered hearts may be left in their train. It is rumored that a doctor has been a necessity at the plantation, and that love philters and charms for alienated affections have been in demand. There is one thing that doesn't appear in the bills of Black America that is very important. There is such an atmosphere of luckiness about the plantation that it is sure to be imparted to every one who enters its charmed circle. This is the reason why, besides the love philters, there are more charms to the square foot on the “Black American” grounds than are usually to be found in as many square miles in other places. The rabbit's foot is the favorite charm for all. It must be taken from animals caught at the proper time and in the proper place and manner to make it effective. Then there is the heart shaped musk bag, with its mysterious filling of broken needles, loadstone, hair, and other mysterious ingredients. These protect against sickness, the wiles and deceptions of the Evil One, and bring all manner of success to those coming within the range of their power. This is a secret that is not usually confided to the outside world, but it will account for any sudden success. The members of the cavalry evidently endeavor to exercise an elevating influence. Perhaps because they are representatives of Uncle Sam's great commonwealth, and have a feeling of responsibility; perhaps because it is not an unpleasant task to – give a little brotherly advice to a saucy young colored damsel. “You's too nice a little gal to be qwarlin like d’at, Sallie. What you don do it foh?” asked one warlike gentleman the other evening. “Go long, youse a smart Aleck, you is,” answered Sallie, a very dark little maiden with a toss of her head and an extra upward curve to her small nose. She gave a twitch to the dinner card around her neck and departed with an air of dignity in the direction of the dining hall which the women, with the exception of a few with, husbands, have to themselves. Shape 1/18/10 27
Most of the plantation villas have a name, which is inscribed in more or less artistic letters on the outside of the building. For further adornment there is the family washbasin that's hanging from the front of each family mansion. A pair or antique rubber boots, with an old broom tucked in one, is an artistic effect to be found only in bachelor camps. That is not the way with Billy McClain's headquarters. Mr. McClain has a cottage just opposite the main entrance to the grand stand, and his name stands out distinctly on a shingle at one side. That shingle is very appropriate, for Mr. McClain came very near hanging out a shingle for himself professionally some years ago when the study of law was absorbing his attention. His name was Moorehead then, and when the stage claimed him for her own, he took the name of his former tutor in law as a reminder of former studious days. He has made it renowned in several branches of art. Mr. McClain is the leader of the Choruses at the “Black America” performances, and he and Mme. Cordelia, his wife, form the aristocracy of the place. Mme. Cordelia is a professional and one of the prima donnas of the Ambrose Park Show. She can give the buck dance in real “Old Plantation” style. That was what she was doing when she and Mr. Billy first met, and, her big soft dark eyes and the pretty color in her cheeks put his heart into such a flutter that it never quite recovered. “Well, of course I think so,” he says modestly when some one tells him what a pretty wife he has. Mme. Cordelia is very domestic just now in her little cabin. It is all arranged with curtains and draperies, carpets and mattings, and any number of big trunks for her clothes. Sometimes she takes these out to show to an intimate visitor. There is a pretty pale green gown with a soft red velvety figure in lace down the front and a low‐cut bodice. There are red dresses, and pink and blue. All colors are becoming to her. Mme. Cordelia says she likes to wear low‐cut dresses, and adds, “because they are becoming to me, but I can't wear them to sing here, for the breezes are too cool. But the sun is hot enough. Why, I've grown three shades darker since I first came.” Mme. Cordelia wants a piano, but the doorway to her small mansion is so narrow that if she has one, it will have to stand outside while she sits just inside and plays. There is a farm on the McClain estate, and Mme. Cordelia has at least half a dozen hens, kept in a coop built between her own and a neighbor's house, and is sure of a fresh egg every morning for breakfast. There isn't a washbasin outside her house, for she believes in a good English tub, and hasn't been able yet to find just the style that suits her. Published: June 2, 1895 copyright © The New York Times Shape 1/18/10 28
Dimples First Appearance, Billy McClain: 21 min. Uncle Tom – 37; 59; 1:02 The Ghost Walks: a chronological history of blacks in show business, 1865­1910, Henry T. Sampson, The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1988: [Indianapolis Freeman] March 8, 1902: “Billy McClain, en route to New York City with Ernest Hogan, is arrested in Kansas City for having too much jewelry for a colored man. He is eventually released after he proves ownership to the authorities.” Mr. McClain wears a big cluster of diamonds, which match the solitaires Mme. Cordelia wears, either when she is singing “Kentucky Home” with the chorus assisting, or in her own home wearing a red teagown. To Billy McClain and Mme. Cordelia belong the credit of introducing the famous cake walks. “It's an old plantation amusement,” said the latter. “Of course, that was before my day. Mr. McClain and I led one on the stage in the South. Well, we were considered a very graceful couple, and were asked to give the walk in the North. We did, and thus started the regular cake walk.” Shape 1/18/10 CORDELIA by Erik Ehn 1
CORDELIA – 1/6/11 “You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?” ­ Lear Act One Sennet. CORDELIA What shall Cordelia – Shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent. Love and be silent. Then poor Cordelia! Yet not so, since my love’s more Richer than my tongue. Nothing, lord, nothing. Unhappy that I am, I Cannot heave my heart into My mouth: I love you apt to My bond; king: nor more nor less. Lord you begot me, Bred me, loved me: I Return those duties Back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, And most honor you. Why have my sisters husbands, If they say they love you all? When I wed, that lord whose hand Must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, And half my care and duty: Sure, I shall never marry Like my sisters, to Love my father all. So: young, lord, and true, I beseech your majesty – If for I want that Glib and oily art, to Cordelia 6/5/11 2
Speak and purpose not; Since what I well intend, I’ll Do’t before I speak: Make known it’s no vicious blot, Murder, or foulness, No unchaste action, That deprives me of Your grace and favour; But want of that for Which I am richer, A still‐soliciting eye, And such a tongue as I’m glad I have not, though not to ha’t Hath lost me in your liking. Peace with Burgundy! Since that respects of fortune Are his love, I shall not be His wife. Our father’s jewels, Wash'd eyes, Cordelia leaves you: I know what you are; And like a sister Am most loath to name your faults. Use well our father. Yet stood I within his grace, I’d tend him to a better place. Time unfolds what cunning hides: Who cover faults, shame derides. Well may you prosper! (Exit.) Cordelia 6/5/11 3
Interlude FOOL Britain, Lear, wired, retired, divides the kingdom, three ways, three daughters. Which one loves him best? Goneril says she does; she gets land and the Duke of Albany. Regan says that she does. She gets land and the Duke of Cornwall. Cordelia won’t flatter her father; says she loves to the apt degree of a daughter who will marry and love a husband. No land. Kent defends her; he’s banished. But the King of France likes her and makes her queen. Albany and Cornwall get to run Britain. Gloucester has a bastard son and another son. It’s mostly a very similar story in many ways but with fewer people. Lear is mistreated by Goneril, mistreated by Regan. He becomes an enemy of the state – he starts to lose his mind in exile. It’s raining. Cordelia, a warrior princess now, brings France to save Lear. It’s raining, there’s a cave, and people are both crazy and pretending to be crazy. Then there’s a farm; Lear is still crazy. Gloucester gets his eyes pulled out by Regan. There is romantic trouble with the bastard and Regan and Goneril. Lear is brought to Cordelia, goes to sleep and wakes up sane. Lear and Cordelia are captured. Goneril kills Regan. Goneril kills herself. Cordelia is hanged in prison. Lear holds Cordelia’s body. Lear dies, as do other good people. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool? That lord that counsell'd thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by me, Do thou for him stand: The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear; The one in motley here, The other found out there. Cordelia 6/5/11 4
All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. Give me an egg, nuncle, and I'll give thee two crowns. Why, after I have cut the egg i' the middle, and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i' the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou gavest thy daughters the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise. That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm, But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy. This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time. He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath. Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint‐stool. And I'll go to bed at noon. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. (Dies. Exeunt, with a dead march.) Cordelia 6/5/11 5
Act Two (In military dress.) CORDELIA Alack, 'tis he: why, Met even now as Mad as the vex'd sea; Singing aloud; crown'd With fumiter and burdocks, Furrow‐weeds, nettles, hemlock, Cuckoo‐flow’rs, darnel, All the idle weeds. A century send forth; search Every acre In the high‐grown field; Bring him to our eye. What can man's wisdom In restoring bereaved sense? Take my outward worth. All blest secrets, Unpublish'd virtues of the earth, Spring with my tears! Be aidant And remediate In that man's distress! Seek, seek for him; lest his rage Crush the life that wants The means to lead it. Father, it is thy business That I go about; Great France my mourning And important tears Hath pitied. No ambition Doth our arms incite, but love, And Our aged father's right: Soon may I hear and see him! Soon may I hear and see him! (The king appears to her; not to us.) How does the king? O kind gods, Cure this great breach in nature, The untuned, jarring senses, Cordelia 6/5/11 6
O, wind up of this Child‐changed man! O my dear father! Restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips; Let this kiss repair Those violent harms That my two sisters Have in thy reverence made! Had you not been their father, These white flakes had drawn pity. Was this a face to oppose ‘Gainst the warring winds, And the dread‐bolted thunder? Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, Should have stood that night Against my fire; thou father Wast fain to hovel with swine, And rogues forlorn, in short straw? Alack, alack! 'Tis wonder That thy life and wits at once Had not concluded. How does my good king? How fares majesty? Sir, do you know me? Look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in blessing O'er me: Sir, you must not kneel. Please your highness, walk. We are not the first Who, with best meaning, Have incurr'd the worst. For thee, oppressed king, am I Cast down; else could I out‐frown False fortune's frown. Shall we not See these daughters, these sisters? (She dies in jail; brutalized, hanged.) CHORUS Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, Cordelia 6/5/11 7
You are men of stones: Had I tongue and eyes, I'd use them so Heaven's vault should crack. I know when one’s dead, And when one lives; she's dead As earth. Lend a looking‐glass; If that her breath will Mist or stain the stone, Then she lives. This feather stirs; She lives! If it be, The chance redeems all sorrows That ever I felt. CORDELIA Away. A plague upon you, Killers, traitors all! CHORUS Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay A little. Ha! What is it Thou say'st? Her voice was e’er soft. I kill'd the slave that Was a‐hanging thee. I am old now. Who are you? Mine eyes are not o' the best. My poor fool is hang'd! No, no life! Why should a dog, A rat, have life, And thou with no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there! Cordelia 6/5/11 DOUBLE ASPECT, BRIGHT AND FAIR by Erik Ehn 1
DOUBLE ASPECT BRIGHT AND FAIR Sign of the Cross (Rory struggles with language. A Mourner lays flowers at a simple shrine.) RORY Que es esta? MOURNER Mi sobrina. RORY Disgulpe me, no entiendo espagnol. Mi palabras son pinchazos, no repuestas. Pero sin embargo acceptamos mi obras futuras y mi oracions immediatmente por la paz. Nunca mas. MOURNER (Unmoved.) Via. No lo entiendo, senor. 1 (i) Agony (Sounds of a generator trying to turn over. Lynn tries to teach her 17 year‐
old daughter Xela – pronounced “Shayla” – how to sleep. Xela is brain damaged from malnutrition.) LYNN Sleep. She says: a piston sound. (The generator starts.) Say watermelon. Say mama. Day care? Will you come in to see Shelly? Please, Xela, up of the ground. (Generator plus Hayden.) Please, señorita, come away from your pacing, from your syllabic counting, from the persevering actions of your hands. (Her voice is nearly drowned out by piano and machine.) You are old enough to walk, baby señorita, Xela. Xela. Listen to me. XELA (Disembodied, unheard.) Her hands hair heart are mangled in generator daughter. 1 (ii) Scourging (Mother Mary enters with a stick and does a dance. Xela, damaged, dances.) MARY Mary comes to beat you, daughter. Mary comes to beat you, mother. Mary comes to beat you, father. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 2
(Rory enters and dances in imitation of Xela. Lynn joins the dance. Mary beats all three.) LYNN My daughter Xela is made out of metal, and time is a file. My machine daughter running on a kerosene of rage and huffed to stupor on this kerosene turns herself to five patterns of five parts each. She will run until the grease is gone, until she seizes or sleeps in a day or in her life. 1 (iii) Crowning (Xela does a five‐pattern dance with Lynn. Xela sleeps in Lynn.) LYNN When you are born you are C‐section. When you are born you are in your own fecal –. When you are born – sleep – you are an old woman. They say all babies are old but you are Mrs. Methuselah. Maybe you were old and when you turned sixteen you died in your sleep and maybe this is what you are like when you are dead. Maybe angels are very annoying. Like zombies and mummies but better because you can put them to sleep with a little dance and they don’t eat you. Angels just repeat the sounding joy which would be very annoying until I die and learn you so good I cannot see you anymore. 1 (iv) Patience (Crucifixion) (Lynn at the kitchen window.) LYNN I put her in the yard when the birds start. She will have it this way. The light is low and the air is hazy. She operates up against the fence under the visual influence of the lilac. She is at the limit of my perception. Sometimes I sleep standing. Later the haze melts and she comes towards me across the yard, without moving, the obstacle‐humidity released. She is in benign seizure. Her face shows no affect. Her posture is for the mannequins in the churches of the poor. She is endlessly patient. 1 (v) Perseverance LYNN Xela says: XELA Road north road south road east road west sky earth mother father burn Road north road south road east road west sky earth mother father burn Burn burn burn burn burn burn burn Suck blow punch kiss dead dead dead Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 3
LYNN Over the carnage fields. Fields flagged red, women walking with men’s shoulders men walking caryatid under weight of wood world. XELA Always this always this always this Life is always life is always death but once death but once Life is always life is always Death but once (Perseverates in stasis.) 2 (i) Prison Chef (Xela watches her Mom cry into batter. Xela talks and dresses as she was before the damage. She is a smart, strong sixteen‐year‐old in a Megadeath tee shirt. Mom is in her work uniform.) XELA She wants to be a cook in places where all the textiles and movables come down a royal line. She wants to cook flowers. When she cooks for me it is like eating a plate of figurines. She cannot find position in this West Texas town, where my father Rory came to work in prisons and then she did too, work in prisons too. In jail there is no time, no money. Mostly spuds. And her hands cry into the batter as she works it. My mother is a prison chef. Tuberculosis bland. And when she cooks flowers and puts them in an Indian funeral down the Ganges of the table, I cannot eat for the sorrowful ache in her imprisoned hands. 2 (ii) Murder Shadow (Lynn sits with her compas late at night.) LYNN Thank you for coming over. Here is a page out of a book I read. It says: (Circle Dance.) LYNN, COMPAS Thank you I respectfully disagree Glorious reunion First be only this Solitary thanks Preconditions Inseparability Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 4
(One of them, not Lynn, has a bloody nose.) COMPA ONE Oh! COMPA TWO Lean your head back. (All nurse Compa One. The bleeder looks at her handkerchief, sees a sign there.) COMPA ONE Lynn? Did you lose a baby? Are you having a baby? LYNN No. (Behind the bleeder’s head, a move.) The shadow of a murderer! (Lynn runs towards it.) Go away! (The sound of barking.) I can see into the chambers and there are no bullets in the gun! COMPA TWO (Narrating.) After that her dogs never stopped barking. (Rory and Xela, distant, bark in tandem.) Even after their voice boxes blew and no sound came out, they kept moving the muscles for barking at three times heart rate, dog’s heart rate. 2 (iii) The Size of the Truck (Lynn sleeps kneeling, water held cupped in two palms. Her palms tilt forward and the water pours out. She can’t open her eyes. She feels around for a tool.) XELA (Undamaged.) She opens her eyes with channel locks. Until she does, what happens outside the house happens inside. (A light rain falls on Lynn, poured from a sprinkler can painted like the night sky. She finds channel locks and opens her eyes. She puts on jeans and tucks in her nightgown. She dresses an unseen, damaged Xela.) LYNN Xela. Xela. Time to get dressed. (She gets keys to the truck from Rory’s pants, which hang on a hook, which is Rory’s extended arm.) Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 5
XELA This is the bigness of the truck. (Lynn touches the huge invisible wall of the truck.) Every surface is a transparency. Every surface, the windshield, the headlamps, the wheel guards, the hood – these are all breakabilities. Big blue transparency. (Lynn loads herself and Xela into the truck. Sunglasses.) Over bad roads. (Subtle dance of the jogged head. Floated arms.) LYNN We’re here, Xela. Come on. Don’t you want to go see Tracy? Don’t you want to go see June? Come out of the truck XELA (Speaking for her damaged self.) No, mom. I don’t want to see Tracy or June. I want to stay in the truck with you. (Narrating.) So Lynn stays in the truck for a while, parked in chestnut shade. Lynn calms me. Starts to change me and lets me lie naked. (Lynn and the narrator lie together.) On the big seat. (They roll gently. Lynn comes out of her jeans but not her nightgown; is still in her sunglasses.) In shadow. Listening to country music. LYNN, XELA (Singing.) Don’t you want to go see Tracy? Don’t you want to go see June? No I do not want no one else I don’t want to go so soon You’re my mother (Dance over. Lynn falls into industrial cooking moves.) LYNN Please take my food. (She washes her hands. She sets her glasses aside. She scoops water into her hands, palms apart. She kneels, she sleeps. Rory’s pants on a peg.) 2 (iv) Renewal of Vow (Xela, before damage, does the dance of Subway Sandwich making.) XELA The sun has not moved in the sky. A crazy man with powers from the Old Bible has stopped the sun in its path. And it is lunch rush at Subway in El Paso over and over again. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 6
(Lynn and Rory, elsewhere.) LYNN I saw her today. RORY Where? LYNN The sandwich shop by the tarp center. (He rises to go get her. Lynn stops him.) She wouldn’t serve me. RORY She’s coming right back here, ma’am. LYNN She didn’t not‐serve me to show up how she could not‐serve me. More like she did not have it in her. And I didn’t have a number. Sit down, Rory. I do not have it in me to have her here. She has lost her number. RORY (Sits. Guardedly.) How is she? LYNN She is not eating. She is getting thinner. She is making parts of herself different colors and putting metal into her self like twenty years ago. The only way for noon to end is for an immortal lizard to take a spent coal from the fire on the land and hold it in front of day’s face. (This happens.) Through the burnt‐out night she rides secret Subway – there is a private turnstile under the condiment counter. She spies on us. The window is a puppet stage that opens onto the different platforms we wait on at different times. (Xela walks down the aisle of a moving subway train. She starts to starve.) She drinks dead woman liquor from Guatemala. Quetzalteca Especial. (Xela, drunk, rides. A puppet stage swings into view outside the window: Rory and Lynn as bride and groom.) Honey, let’s renew our vows. RORY Which ones? LYNN Wedding. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 7
RORY “I do.” LYNN In a church. XELA It rains on the way to the church. It rains on the wait for the bus. It rains coal black, with ash from southern volcanoes in the sky. When they get to the justice of the peace, Lynn takes off the coat Rory lent her and the color soaked through wrinkled to give her white dress the aspect of Quetzal traje but organized now as death, as skeleton. Rory’s tie soaked and bled and when he takes it off, there is a negative space. Noon again. I work. They are bus‐stop ash. 2 (v) Bursting Mercy (Lynn speaks to a death row inmate.) LYNN Masked figure all draped in scarves, smoking a big cigar – my husband is back from his errands. My husband is back from the Mercado of Hell with his ten‐cent stone and unstamped postcards. He will execute you today. What do you want for your last meal? (The figure whispers to her.) If I make such a thing, will you eat it? (Yes. Flowers everywhere.) This is how Indian Princesses ride dead down the Ganges. (They embrace. They contact each other in the flowers. Lynn is naked. Lynn is dominant. She smokes his cigar. She wears one of his scarves.) FIGURE She is living now somewhere with her daughter, in Missouri. She is old, and he is old, and they are almost done. 3 (i) Racist Prank Turns Deadly (Rory is Made) XELA (Spinning, dropping, rising, spinning, semi‐damaged.) Daddy young and young friend. They are under a bed but not their own. Faces perpendicular to the floor. (Rory and Friend approach slowly. Rory slides a candle.) FRIEND I want to go. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 8
RORY Time flies you can’t they go too fast. FRIEND What’s that supposed to mean? RORY Means you can’t, not so fast. FRIEND What now that we’re in the house between the bed and the floor? RORY Now we scare them. FRIEND I’ll leave you all my scared and go, then. RORY Won’t take long. Make like a ghost. Mexicans are scared of ghosts. FRIEND Then what? RORY Then they move out. Then this is our clubhouse again and we can pee in the dirt. FRIEND How’s a ghost go? RORY You know. Oooo. FRIEND Oooo. Don’t like it. RORY Quiet. I think they’re coming. XELA They stop on their crawl. They make their ghost sounds. The candle flame rises into the batting. Daddy as a young man and his young friend roll out ghosting for real. Out into the road, and down the road, up and down the rolling. (Rory joins Xela, in a drop‐and‐roll modified for dance, extinguishing his burning clothes.) Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 9
The daddy of the family who was meant to be scared runs back in to save the place – this is a squatter’s shack – all wood and sheet metal. His two young sons follow him in and they are cooked. “Perish in a blaze,” as the article says. My daddy’s parents and the parents of the friend bathe them in calamine and hide them from the sight of the world. 3 (ii) Argument (Rory and Lynn fight about money.) RORY It’s in there. LYNN Where did you put the – where did the money go? RORY I paid it. You tell them we paid. LYNN Where do you keep the cancelled checks? RORY They haven’t come back yet, and three questions in a row is bad luck. LYNN Where did the money go? RORY And a repeat to boot. (Pause.) I could ask the same question! I do! (Pause.) It’s in my pocket. LYNN Then that’s that. RORY You’re my ex‐wife now, Lynn. LYNN Ex ‘til death do us part. RORY I’m going outside. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 10
LYNN Yes, you are. RORY I mean – LYNN I know what you mean. Do they know that you’re not coming in Monday, down at work? RORY I don’t know. LYNN Look in on Xela on the way out, but don’t wake her. RORY I won’t be gone very long. (He leaves without looking in on his damaged daughter.) Outside. (Sleeping daughter casts sleep on father. They sleep and dream together.) 3 (iii) Crow (Rory dances with Xela. She sleeps in him.) RORY This bird is an ocean in a scooped black cove on the east coast of Mexico. This bird is a good finder. This bird comes out of night to take parts of day back. This bird made out of oceans. Out of the small and pitiful oceans in the scooped beaches of the body. This salty night in my chest. This bird with stone obstacle on its tongue. This stone in place of you. This blocked tongue of a heart, this bird made of oceans in my chest. I love you. My love comes out stone‐stuck crow mouth. Daughter. 3 (iv) Science RORY (Singing.) X‐wife X‐wife Pick up the phone A crazy barman Reads the medicine wheel: I must not be alone Lynn Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 11
X‐wife Secret queen Of the unseen Telephone wedding ring 3 (v) Sever (Rory in his corrections uniform. He does a small dance with Xela as he prepares to execute the Warrior.) RORY Waiting is waiting for a bus. Waiting is riding the bus. Nothing ever happens but by small steps looking down. Waiting is the day before the rain. Waiting is rain no coat. Nothing ever happens in a way you can say it has begun – rain is happening before you call it rain then it is all in you. Waiting is life and waiting is death and we act in small ways in between. Head down, kill man, cyanide gas. Man woman child. Waiting, and all else is killing by small steps. 4 (i) Rogue Cop Burns Village XELA She testifies. SURVIVOR He rang the church bell for help. Climbing the tower and beating it with a stone when the rope broke. XELA She works in and out of the story. Autopsy of narrative. SURVIVOR Like with a small fire too the smoke follows you. But a fire through the town and fields and where we tried to run from it the smoke would confuse us and we would run back to the flames or into dead us. Harvest lay flat black on the ground like cave paintings. Two youths running through so fast and exhausted we thought at first they were smiling but their faces were just pulled so tight. The men had gone, misdirected by an advance guard disguised as regulars into thinking the threat was from the north. It was all rain. And the fire kept going through it. We were so in filth by then that we were invisible to them, and moved where lizards move. I know now they are the rogues, the vigilantes. In company employ. Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 12
A day each. One day for the two boys who came running. Whole day. One day for the women. One day for the children. Each in a different way. They would stop for lunch, and set back in. We who hid could hear our children. A day each. Ghost town. Or more properly, a vigilante town. The vigilantes claim it and hold there until hunger and disorder in addition to superior force of arms enters and jails them and puts them all deep in the forever gas. Rain runs down the mountain Rain is dog of the sea Rain knows no other master Rain barks at me He has tolerance for pain beyond the pale. His hand passed through a flame. His heart passed through the whole of the fire, working the metal of the devil. The End Double Aspect Bright and Fair 9/19/11 HIDEBOUND by Erik Ehn SUMMARY Rory works for Corrections as an executioner Rory is Married to Lynn Lynn is a Prison Chef Lynn and Rory have a heavy metal daughter, Xela Xela won’t eat Lynn’s food. She moves out of the house and works in a Subway Sandwich shop. She spies on her parents by means of magic subway. She still won’t eat. She suffers brain damage, and moves back home. Rory moves out. Rory stays in touch with his X‐wife. Rory takes an unexcused leave from work Rory executes a mass killer The mass killer is a rogue cop who gathered a private army The private army works in the interests of a mineral company that wants squatters removed from its land The private army kills the squatters and torches the village When Rory was a boy, he accidentally caused the death by fire of a man and his two children. Rory was never caught 1
HIDEBOUND BAR‐B‐Q EATERS West Texas Conquistador Biologic War Scarlet Fever Mineral Sweat Conquistador Too much runnin around boys Too much runnin around Painting it thin around town, boys Too much runnin around He wears silver He wears gold Conquistador Is very old NARRATOR Conquistador approaches the bar‐b‐q shack down. He comes down from out of the rain. He is a container truck. He carries three human heads by their hair. The eaters circle their shoulders around their food. He sleeps with all their wives Abraham Lincoln runs the bar‐b‐q. When he wakes up from his hangover, he is staring up the pee hole of a pink plastic doll ling on garden furniture that stands next to an inflatable pool opaqued by a skin of the night’s bugs. Abe’s face bears the pattern of the extruded metal tabletop. He looks in the pee hole and the insides of the doll are like a sugar Easter Egg – a pink scene englobed there, light all even, play there unmolested, soft extruded sugar forms at sport. BAR‐B‐Q EATERS Conquistador Varnished Spanish floor NARRATOR The soldier brings his wife over on a tidy lacquered boat. He brings a box over, the size of a sitting room. He re‐assembles the box in Mexico and sets the chamber on stilts higher than the scorpions will go. His wife dies of scarlet fever in that room. He takes the blanket and gives it as a gift to the man’s daughter. His hand comes forward in kindness from out of the terrible place he occupies in the wall of the world. He tucks the man’s child in and gives the man to drink. Hidebound 7/15/98 2
He pours shit from both hands over the land. Tanker cars. East, West. BAR‐B‐Q EATERS Where did he come from? He is so old This is West Texas, today Scarlet Fever, rubella, and syphilis Spent uranium You can ask but He won’t say NARRATOR He gives syphilis to the wives; he gives syphilis to the husbands, to the offspring. Riding through town at night he is able to kill from both sides of the horse. He is well paid. In his gleaming, he is mad. All you need for a game is a round thing that can be kicked and rolled. The streets run with mad syphilitic children. They kick unrecognizable things in the rain. He shelters from the rain in a mountain made of pure gold. The bar‐b‐q meat is gone. The men circle their shoulders around the emptiness between their hands, as if there were still food there. They can hear his hiding as surely as they can hear his coming. The way a freight train is audible, one way or another, forever. The End Hidebound 7/15/98 THE ARCHITECTURE OF GREAT CATHEDRALS by Erik Ehn 1
THE ARCHITECTURE OF GREAT CATHEDRALS 1. Toast DESICCATED BISHOP In an abandoned cathedral, anomalous and likely, he finds himself at a side altar in front of an icon of his ex‐wife. Guatemala City. (Rory the executioner squats in front of an icon of his Ex‐wife. She is behind Plexiglas. She waits for toast to pop. After many years, it does. Mannequin Ex‐
wife turns to face her husband.) EX‐WIFE Dead people, under your feet! 2. Testimonies (The Dead speak.) I tried to paint a mural of what happened to our town. But I ran out of red paint. I hid in the belfry and the stream in the street was silver like mercury from a broken thermometer. It was the melted fat from the burning bodies. The adults were stripped and thrown in the river. The children were burned on the pile of shucked clothes. None of this is true. No. None of this is true. These stories, they are simple tools. These are Stone Age people and their stories are simple tools against us. In my town, since we move back, the wild parrots only scream. That is what they heard last. 3. Death (A scene played in a grave. A small scene played by small people in a grave.) BOY How long will you kill, Papi? FATHER ‘Til the whole country is shit. BOY What will you have then? The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 2
FATHER My life. BOY Worth what? FATHER Money. BOY How will you have money? FATHER After we cut off their hands and stuff them in their pockets, they will not be able to beg for it. After we cut off their genitals and stuff them in their mouths they will not be able to breed a generation to beg for it or speak their need for it or jerk off and ruin my view of it. After it is all shit, out past the shit the money will have fled and I will retreat there covered with shit. I will hose you off me and money will grow from shit all around like fucking weeds. BOY It is not the money. You are mad. FATHER If I were mad I couldn’t drive the blade so well. BOY You are not human. FATHER I am not the human I was. I cut the throat of my crying soul and threw him in the shit. This man before you is a human with a shitty soul and I delight in killing you. My boots are high. In I go. (The Father kills his Son.) 4. Witness (Rory witnesses the above scene. He talks with an Angel.) RORY Is that me? Did the killer come back as me? ANGEL No. You are a reincarnated victim. The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 3
RORY To be killed. ANGEL What do you need? The killer’s soul fled before the killer died. The killer is a stratum of clay horizontal along the grave’s wall. He was rich. The rich are so rich they pay heaven to destroy you again. RORY Can’t be. ANGEL Yes, of course it can! There is a special rock I can show you in the desert. It’s the rock where the rich paid God. RORY Who ‐? (Ex‐wife, mannequin/icon, observes Rory and the Angel.) EX‐WIFE This is the angel Itrumptim. Who called him that? And who called him at all? ANGEL You are the child who asked the killer so many questions. 5. Killer FATHER Rory is on unexcused leave from his job as executioner with the Texas State Department of Corrections. He applies for part‐time work as a security guard, Guatemala City. HAPPY HAPPY PIZZA MAN (Not the caricature his name implies.) I hear you were corrections. RORY No. MAN That’s what I hear. RORY I don’t say nothing. The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 4
MAN You say plenty. You’re saying something to me right now. RORY Not loud enough, I guess. MAN I need a man to watch the place. RORY That’s where we started. MAN I need a man with a shotgun to watch the restaurant. RORY That’s where we stopped. Not looking for vigilante. Don’t use guns. MAN Well I’d give you a gas chamber if I coulda fit it in my trunk. But now I want to put this shotgun in your hand. RORY I’m on vacation. 6. Mourning (A mannequin of Bishop Gerardi lies in state in a side altar in a church in Guatemala City.) MOURNERS Bishop Gerardi said what was said Bishop Gerardi lies dead Life is always Death but once Death but once Nunca mas Nunca mas Nunca mas The 200,000 Nunca mas Nunca mas The 36 years The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 5
MOURNER You can almost see Gerardi come to life in his shrine. He waits for us there. We accompany him. There in the architecture of this great cathedral. 7. Want (Rory observes a valley from a volcano.) RORY The woman at the common spigot with her plastic tub. The woman walking down the furrow, back straight as a man’s. In the midst of this damage and recovery, inefficient heavy‐footed labyrinthine grieving, ready for tears, widows and orphans and terrible men alone, I want a woman. 8. Mortality (Rory gets ready for his job as a Pizza Hut Vigilante. The Boy he will slay approaches the wall by the Dumpster. X‐wife observes.) X‐WIFE Rory dresses in uniform. BOY I know the last thought you thought. RORY Go away. X‐WIFE He laces black boots in imitation of federal force. BOY I see you wait for it. RORY I am not waiting. X‐WIFE His belt is wide for a clip. His shirt has epaulets. He wears a shiny black helmet. The gun is pump action. RORY Go away. The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 6
X‐WIFE The boy – BOY Desire this. X‐Wife Is hungry. Climbs the wall. For scraps. BOY Do not turn or the machine of this has no fuel. Do not turn until there is only me. X‐WIFE He listens to rats. He listens to diesels from 30 years ago choke back tears on even the low grade. RORY Boy climbing shedding life at a time, stripped back to all‐age human terror at the core of self‐aware existence. X‐WIFE He rigs a plywood bridge over the broken glass at the top of the wall. Rory wheels and sees him mid‐flight. The shot knocks the boy back and the blood marks the mathematical median between absolute earth and absolute air, the mid‐distance between the top and bottom of the fortification. The mural, red, paints: “Was.” (The Boy leaps. Rory shoots him dead.) Christ, Mother Severe one, lover Discover justice God my sister God my brother No no this child is only sleeping I commend this child to my God’s keeping 9. If Life Could Be As Organized As Death MOURNER If life could be as organized as death I would have someone to vote for and I would vote. My water would be clean of parasites. I would know more living people than dead. I could pitch conversations high and wide, an architecture of time that would stand long enough to support a peace. If life were as organized as death I would know where my mother is buried and her death would provoke action and she will The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 7
not have died in vain. Organized as death. The delivery of toxins by all systems in the infrastructure. The rate of flow. The hustle and bustle. 10. Rory the Killer Again (Rory sleeps in the streets with the dogs. A Mayan woman with a heavy load on her head walks slowly by a giant Orange Crush ad painted on the side of a rough plaster wall. Metal signs bolted there also advertise Tabcin and Quetzalteca Especial.) DOG (To Rory.) What are you doing here? RORY You… go to sleep. (The death‐dressed Quetzalteca Woman comes down from her sign.) QUETZALTECA WOMAN Time to go. Change your clothes. Here, I’ll help you. RORY I can change my own clothes. QUETZALTECA WOMAN (Stripping him.) Then why aren’t you moving your hands? RORY I… You… Go to sleep. QUETZALTECA WOMAN Your clothes leave your body as life’s costume leaves the slain. Your clothes leave your body as tenderly as flesh leaves to bone to find secret escape in the soil. And your uniform comes on like costume. Your new uniform is as bright as a secret revealed. Your new uniform is as bright as a secret revealed. (Rory is dressed as a Texas State Department of Corrections executioner. He prepares the Devil for execution by lethal injection.) DEVIL Rory! You are back at work! RORY (Working straps, whispering into the Devil’s ear.) Please kill me. DEVIL No. You will kill me. The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 8
RORY I have done so much. DEVIL Me too. Me too. RORY Please. Kill me. DEVIL I have made you unforgivable this time so you will go to hell and I will have your company there. RORY No one is unforgivable. DEVIL That’s right. Work is unforgivable, and we all must work. (Prior to execution.) The End The Architecture of Great Cathedrals 1/25/10 STAR by Erik Ehn 1
STAR (Caffeine Fairies are fast shadows.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Salvador Christ Eye‐twitch coffee Strong coffee – Rwandan/Salvadoran beans. Poison (The Fairies whisper into the ears of customers; the customers all kneel at child‐sized tables. Everyone is alone.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Crescent works at a coffee shop. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Saint in the poison in the coffee. (A woman gets up for more coffee.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO (Overlapping with above.) There is universal poison in the coffee. (Mellow Jazz – horribly mellow – blares at the level of distortion. Then, its distorted self is played at a barely audible level.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Crescent, competing with the smooth jazz, finds everyone dead in the coffee shop. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Sarah Page and the homeless man who found the boy. CRESCENT And – we’re awake! CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Well, and the right to kill them all. FAIRIES (Singing.) Balm Stop Wash Fade Speed Swing Green Star 12/17/09 2
Ivanhoe Road All the Mummies Coffee is a mechanism designed to terrify pleasure CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Small, crowded tables CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE With poverty criminalized – CRESCENT Well, I have to do something Scene Two (Second Watch turns over the operation of the shop to Crescent, who is Third Watch. The moon goes from quarter to crescent. Streets empty. As Crescent comes in the shop, construction noise follows her in. The scene is controlled by road‐crew sodium lighting and a rotating orange flash. Steam up from the street. Steam from the loud – the equally loud – espresso machine. Second Watch is cleaning the machine, which fires up to full volume as Crescent comes in with her own burst of sound.) SECOND WATCH Non‐stop machines. CRESCENT Bleach steam. (Second Watch leaves. Momentary silence. The Caffeine Fairies are disguised as humans. They try to engage the customers in conversation, to no avail.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Crescent by now works in a coffee shop in Kansas City, Kansas; absolute middle; singer in the Tenderloin Opera Company CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE There’s a circuit for experimental music laid out on the old vaudeville line. Opera by for and about junkies, out of work teachers and journalists, people with scabs on tender skin. Like all good opera, about people with TB, people who can’t breathe! CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She wants to kill people. Star 12/17/09 3
CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She herself is actually a slim, efficient dolphin, but with insomnia; she gets sleepy at the wrong times and sinks… CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She wants to kill all white people. All white males. SECOND WATCH (Undressing for bed at home.) She is the product of rape CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She laces the coffee with poison. (First, she poisons dogs.) CRESCENT Ignorant. Here. Ignorant. Eat it. (A dog eats poisoned meat. She watches the dog die. She buries the dog with ceremony through below.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Or children, because children drink out of dog dishes – dogs are watered first in the drought; all the water goes to coffee. (The bell over the door of the coffee shop rings.) Children are smaller, takes less poison, which is hard to come by. (She ignores the shop. She walks down a cold road to the sea at night. To a lonely lighthouse keeper.) CRESCENT I would like to borrow your boat. LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER Why? I’m alone here. I get miserable. It’s terrible at night. CRESCENT Stay up on the rock. I’m taking your boat. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO (Reading a letter.) Then? Goes on a sailboat? To get more poison? FAIRIES (Birdsong.) Strange, hurt face at strange windows. (She returns to the lighthouse. She presents the Keeper with a basket of fresh rolls. He eats one. He climbs the long stairs to the light. The light rotates past him – at each turn he becomes more transparent. He is projected as a shadow.) Star 12/17/09 4
CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Returns and kills them all. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO He becomes the sort of shadow spirit that only falls at night; he is a shadow in the night and no one knows he is there or that he is gone. (Crescent muffles the bell and returns to the coffee shop.) FAIRIES (Song.) Rwandan/Salvadoran beans. (They fly into the shop behind her, adoring the caffeine.) CRESCENT Caffeine fairies – shadows of caffeine move among the dead. What to make of this? (She sits idly with the two Fairies, who have spent their energy for the moment.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She will leave the coffee shop to enjoy some ice cream. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Lights out in the ice cream shop. Out of business. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Blood is a bag of coins on the historian’s floor. He will pick up the coins – take them from you – then write what he wants to anyway. CRESCENT I am so happy! So generally happy! Scene Three (Crescent and her Co‐worker toil – churning out orders, cleaning equipment, bussing tables, carrying bags of coffee beans. Steam from the espresso machines, steam from the delousing showers.) CO‐WORKER Sustained work: speed/Benzedrine; WWII fighter pilot dump. CRESCENT Down at the – down the hill – got speed – from behind panels in the cockpits of the fighter – yes – planes – ben – yeah – zedrine – WWII. (They are shiny, beautiful.) CRESCENT, CO‐WORKER Ambient caffeine – barista/through the skin. Star 12/17/09 5
FAIRIES (Ready for a show.) The Tender Opera. (Crescent slows down, switches out the music; adds in her bootleg.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She swaps out CD of the week for her own (A opera without music. The silent operations of the stage described in supertitle.) OPERA Smoke x 7 Simple syrup Minotaur Minit‐ print. Fed‐ex/Kinkos (Snow – a million tiny pages from a million tiny copier machines. The opera has no music, but the response to the opera is music. Fairies Sing.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Some thing are lies, some aren’t, about her, and her behavior. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She is not an immigrant. How are you classing her features? FAIRIES Steam and the cocoa butter – skin like glass. OPERA (Printed titles.) Glass‐head girl. Watch the play of fluids in her brain Architectural collapse/fire – Everything’s up to date in… Minotaur at the end of the supermarket aisle Follows her back to the – With her in the shop FAIRIES The home Less man asleep A table small as gold A diabetic monster; shock Cut him Apart Now tearing down The cardboard boxes in back Star 12/17/09 6
Crescent’s making pox, her chicks lay Their pox Into nests of lice (Opera over.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE (Spoken.) The delousing shower in the back. Coffee and delousing Scene Four (The Smooth Jazz CD plays in the shop, empty except for Crescent. Crescent turns the shop over to First Watch, and goes home.) THE CD A collapsed uterus Goose‐intestine passing grease – Passing a lump of pork fat (The Caffeine Fairies are invisible. So late. ) CRESCENT All that coffee and still sleepy. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Looking out the winter window at – CRESCENT Tree‐clowns. Clowns sitting on the phone lines. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Immigration doctors are up and down the street performing tests on the clonic phase of the old time hysterics, the 19th century women they have dressed and chased into the trees. Dresses of fire and the women are flying to the heights. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Oh, don’t you cry. She blubbers; she blubbers like Queequeg with a harpoon. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE Isn’t morning yet. Dinner time for her is five a.m. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Adding bay leaf to her sauce, at home, waiting for friends and then capital punishment. Star 12/17/09 7
CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE The leaves are a crown for courage; she’s a hero (The sun is up enough for the fairies as shadows to appear. They tell this story to all passers‐by.) CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Crescent is a jazz singer. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She wants to kill all white people, all white men. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She is the product of rape. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE “Product” is a bad word. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Her mother married her rapist. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She says/she sings smooth jazz in the student bars. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO Smooth jazz plays in the coffee shop. (We see enough of the scene to know that Crescent lives near an urban beach.) CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She is a small and elegant whale; the sleepy whale forgets to breathe. CRESCENT In the ghost ocean of ancient Kansas City. The Pacific used to stop here. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO She considers sniping, but fear of guns. She poisons children – drink made with simple syrup. She poisons adults with Salvadoran/Rwandan beans. She is a hero. CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She will be killed for her actions. Burned at the stake. FAIRIES (Singing.) I love her. CAFFEINE FAIRY TWO What is her song? Star 12/17/09 8
CAFFEINE FAIRY ONE She sings smooth but with her own words, in broken poverty Scene Five CRESCENT (Singing alone in her apartment, prior to arrest.) A burst Apartment on The broken shoulder of The Winter asphalt. I cannot conceive Of you I put it down in a letter Because I can lie there I am sure of three things. None of them Are you I suspect three things I suspect they are true I tell three lies about you But to you, not one I have three wishes And you are in none (Speaking.) A few more minutes and my world is mine again. Six minutes. Five. The door keeps opening, letting the world in. Soon it will let me out. There is somebody working somewhere, writing – getting ahead of me. Or it is the sound of scratching at lice or the lice themselves in a nest. Keep the coffee going. Thick. Hot. Am I missing anything? Something I need to move. Three minutes. Not yet. I am not missing anything yet. Two minutes. Although I will. Miss it. Star 12/17/09 9
What minute frees me? Frees me from what? Remembering this. I have given myself a deadline for forgetting. I am occupied with this If I fail to forget, then I will be missing something. Burned at the stake. KC apartment. FAIRIES (Singing.) Pentecost – light – upper room. The End Star 12/17/09 DOGSBODY by Erik Ehn 1
DOGSBODY ACT ONE TRAUMA WARD “Miti Akata” = Careless Love. TRAUMA 1. ARROWS MOTHER Scovia sets out four times. Athlete. Four arrows look for her. Abducted two months, six months, a year, four years. The arrows search for her, don’t find her. FATHER Four stories, taken together, telescope as one. MOTHER Abducted two months FATHER Cooks, holds ankles. MOTHER Six months, raped. FATHER One year, kills small boy. MOTHER Four years, kills/cuts up father, with help of younger brother. SCOVIA It has been one month since I – MOTHER Honey Tree Arrow Bread FATHER Scholar Athlete Skein Dogsbody 1/12/10 2
(Scenes begin with their ending, then go back to the beginning.) Honey [End.] FATHER She is taken. She is taken for two months, she cooks, she cleans. MILITIA MAN Don’t you fall asleep. MOTHER Her hands are bound. She works the pot that boils the water to get the typhus out. MILITIA MAN One day your hands will be free. [Beginning. Scovia asleep in her bed at home; her eyes won’t open. The feel of playground chants.] FATHER Bolts in bed, eyes stuck together, her mother with a warm cloth touches them open. Still she sees As through honey. Wet grass bends to Roman arch; children run through on the way to school, hiding from weeding. MOTHER She weeds quickly, root starch; Girl tunnels too, then: Nuns Lock themselves In the building The militia will burn And family back Behind the children: Invisible as shadows when thunderheads come. Dogsbody 1/12/10 3
Empty skin, empty bones, empty blood; a bee without its honey is a cockroach, a fly, a mosquito. The young girl: is a vapor of sick; the nun who lost them left behind: praying. MILITIA MAN Don’t you fall asleep. FATHER She sleeps. (She sleeps in the branches of a tree.) SCOVIA A bee pattern dance Empty bees Lice love the hive Highly, more than highly, sublime Lice in the carapace, lice in the teacher. (A young Militia Man lifts her down from the tree.) Tree [End.] (Sitting under a tree.) MOTHER When she wakes she is under a tree. She is abducted six months, she is raped. When she is home she will study to be a chemist; she will have no books for 15 years; mantling typhus climbs her spine. FATHER We do not see a thing of the rape except for a drop of sap that falls from the tree onto her skirt. She sits without moving. As if a bird shat there. MOTHER Dismantling her for sleep, sitting straight, the ambush will come, she will go; her face will twist like a carbon or benzene or text of testimony. [Beginning. She has run through the tall grass; has weeded the cassava. She sets a beehive in the tree at the convent school.] FATHER A kind of ladder was beaten into the side of a tree, small slaps of wood nailed like sanctifying minus signs. In the tree, in talking about the tree, in setting the hive – Dogsbody 1/12/10 4
Scovia – she – Scovia – she made it to school. Up there, setting the hive, a log whose pith is easily removed – round as a thigh and thigh‐bone long – she sets the hive and up there you can see them coming. MOTHER The bees are finding the hive; she then is mute; they kick her people before them and set them in the yard; the teacher will not open the doors; the children locked out in the yard. Metal. Locked. FATHER The bees gather to her. She is so still. The bees crawl her cool skin. At first the bees hide her; then they sting – Look the bees have stung her numb. And they fly her down to the middle of the yard. She is laid out where she fainted from the tree, to the militia in the cloister yard. MILITIA MAN There is no Christmas if you stay in the tree. FATHER The nails fall like teeth, the bees fly away. MOTHER All this association makes me sick, like a simile. She is as sick as a simile. She watches the schoolhouse burn like bees, like nails. Her silence, no exception, and her faint – insufficient blindness, insufficient unconscious. Arrow [End.] FATHER In such heart as I can remember. In such heat as I can manage. She wakes up. Wait, wait. When she, lost as desert‐in‐desert wakes, wait, wakes, she is abducted one year. Her training is in the arrow, the apple is in the young boy’s chest, boy whose voice is a thread unthreading a botulism or text. She kills a young boy firing an arrow into his heat. MILITIA MAN Don’t push the arrow, let it go. MOTHER She, the scholar, the archer. [Beginning. Mother continues.] Dogsbody 1/12/10 5
She wakes – her mother warm‐cloths her eyes open, she weeds the roots, runs the wet grass to the convent school where she prays, sets the hive for Scholastique, too old; she speaks French and draws the bow, leveling at the hay‐stuffed round. Her name is Scovia. Scovia wears glasses. She is – (She practices archery, trained by a nun. She holds the moment of draw. The target is replaced by a young boy. She angles the arrow down over his chest.) FATHER Tilted down to the closet that holds the young boy’s heart. Scovia. Scovia. Scovia. Don’t. MOTHER The arrow transfers from the bow to the boy to the heart as the interior action of a heavy machine, a rod shifting weight from a turning gear into the negative of a die stamp hole. The human register on his face is light in the eyes when you shut your lids and turn from the sun, fading. FATHER A bee flies into a hive. Bread in the morning. MOTHER An arrow moves time, asymmetrical power: decay. FATHER A lot of killing happens in the daytime when the army is away from protecting the school and militia can walk in freely. Bread [End.] MOTHER When she wakes she is in a room she is making the root starch bread she is dividing the loaves, four parts, she has been abducted four years. Has lived four years in the bush. When her father, her brother and herself were abducted, the father was commanded to kill the children, as a trope. The father asked his children to kill him instead. To four, cut to four pieces, these pieces are not retrieved or even buried there is no metaphor for their acclaim, their remonstration. She will study, she will study, study to be a social worker, no books for fifteen years. MILITIA MAN Do not fall asleep, Scovia. Tie tight you must be weary The tight you must be crazy Dogsbody 1/12/10 6
MOTHER Honey, tree, arrow, bread. Delightful bread, eaten warm. And the bees are flying. And the leaves are Dropping Fall for falling. Her mother was killed outright while she was at school. And the complex bread is eaten warm from the tricks of the fire, The patience of the baker, Staying with heat through the morning. [Beginning.] FATHER She wakes up. Pulls her eyes open. MOTHER Bread, weeds, tall grass, sets the hive, sees them coming, her father and others driven forth to the school. The nuns lock themselves inside and are burned; a nailed tread breaking loose under her foot – the militia man orders the father to kill the daughter who drops from the tree. To kill the daughter and son. The father refuses. She and her brother chop the father to parts. Asymmetry. Complex. The parts warm as bread. MILITIA MAN Come down from the tree. MOTHER The tree shook, Weak house, a truck goes by. He looks up and sees her. Seizes, seizure. MILITIA MAN Pick out your brother for me. MOTHER She is down fall, flown from the tree and making choices. MILITIA MAN You are ten years old. Where will you strike the first blow? You are not tall enough to reach his neck or strong enough to break in on his heart. He dies from the belly out, slowly. Or they lay your father out below you. Your father in the dirt. Or he pays for the kindness of a bullet in the head, and you and your brother work on him an hour in the sun. Dogsbody 1/12/10 7
MOTHER When she strikes her father she is in control of a weapon. FATHER Years and years having sliced bread the way cholera or typhoid cuts. SCOVIA I wish I had killed my brother so there would be no eyes in my life left that know me. MILITIA MAN Texture, resistance, temperature, duration. Wrath. MOTHER The bread was thrown into the fire and burnt. FATHER The chemistry of the grain, the bread the body taken past itself and converted to smoke to stink. MILITIA MAN Stunned as she was there was wrath in the arm of the daughter. Unshaped, with no object, but present in the heat of the work’s short time. [Sum.] MOTHER Scovia, four times: FATHER She is abducted briefly; she’s a cook. She escapes in ambush. MOTHER She weeds the cassava and runs through the tall grass; she is abducted from school, several months, raped and escapes in ambush. FATHER She is setting a hive in a tree; she sees the nuns of the school trapped inside and burned. She falls from the tree. She is forced to kill a young boy with an arrow. Her brother. She is abducted for a year. MOTHER She is setting a hive. Fire. Her father is brought forward; her mother is dead. She and her brother are forced to kill the father. Cutting him up. She is abducted four years. Dogsbody 1/12/10 8
MILITIA MAN I am addicted to something I have run out of. FATHER Her loneliness solid as a room. MOTHER A thing you open and the inside is not a reveal but a ruin; its secrecy was maintaining the whole. Now there’s nothing. Dogsbody 1/12/10 9
TRAUMA 2. CELL BELLE‐ROSE, SUZANNE Condition of the road Isolate Condition of the road Shape Where you go to pee Lost cell phone Goat throat Pay The road from Lira To Mbale BELLE‐ROSE On her – on her aging skin, the story as if written in pencil many months ago. To donate insulin to their hospital. Abayudaya. She stops and pulls over to pee behind a bush. There are still a thousand children in the bush but she doesn’t see them. She pees marrow. Kathy is sick, she gets back in and drives corrugation. She leaves her cell phone in the bush; the children; as a child, Winnie comes and gets it. (Winnie, living in the bush, in flight from the rebels, finds Kathy’s cell phone, and keeps it secret.) SUZANNE Winnie calls the weather – not about the weather but the weather itself. Winnie calls the time. Kathy keeps paying even when she is resting at the Health Center, because she wants to see. BELLE‐ROSE, SUZANNE Living off marrow from goat bones, marrow from dog. Typhoid, malaria; Retroviral override, Accountable to death. (The phone rings. Winnie answers.) WINNIE Whose phone is this? (A friend of Kathy’s, on the other end.) FRIEND Kathy’s phone. Dogsbody 1/12/10 10
WINNIE Where is Kathy? FRIEND What are you doing with her phone? WINNIE Looking for Kathy. FRIEND Why? WINNIE To give her her phone. FRIEND She is where? Where is she? WINNIE Down‐road, in her aging skin. This is her number. Hello? SUZANNE Charges it at the NGO rice dumps. (The friend is gone.) BELLE‐ROSE By friend and by friend, Winnie gets Kathy’s new number. Kathy and Winnie – puppets on slow film flying, showing slowness. (Winnie and Kathy grow closer.) By friend and by friend, Winnie gets Kathy. (Winnie dials; a sentence per call; closer and closer.) WINNIE I have no school fees. I was in fourth grade forever. I returned to the bush. Under the chapati tree and the babies in the passion fruits la la la. There was typhoid in the well; soldier who was guarding the camp was my sudden husband, the water overloading my retrovirals, I am better in the bush, I don’t want to dig. (Face to face with Kathy; Winnie has found her. Kathy is in a hospital.) KATHY I have to go. WINNIE You’re sick too? Dogsbody 1/12/10 11
KATHY Not that sick. WINNIE Will you let me keep the phone? KATHY No. WINNIE Keep paying the phone. KATHY No, I’ve done what I came to do. (She’s finished her project in Uganda. Kathy holds out her hand for the phone. Winnie starts to leave. Kathy starts to stay.) BELLE‐ROSE The manager at the health center restrains Winnie from going. But she goes. School starts up. They are in school! Winnie with Scovia, Belle‐Rose, and Suzanne. Winnie calls and then leaves the phone flipped open near the center of things, pulling the sound of – a teacher… SUZANNE (Shouting at Kathy, through the phone.) I want a trivet. Get me a trivet. I need a – BELLE‐ROSE (Continuing from “A teacher…”) Holding a crying baby, trying to get the crying baby to call her “mama.” (LRA soldiers.) KATHY They come again. The girls flee. BELLE‐ROSE, SUZANNE Marrow phone draining Peeing marrow into the bush. The money is bleeding out. The battery itself is failing. BELLE‐ROSE They sleep in the forest evading camps and abductors. They would come in at night to the bus station in Gulu; they were called the Night Commuters but they don’t let them stay anymore. SUZANNE Sleeping: failing batteries. Dogsbody 1/12/10 12
BELLE‐ROSE They fall asleep, passing the phone. Kathy pays the phone. (Phone: flat hands to the sides of their heads; goes to dance – bearing each other’s weigh by the head.) They don’t let them stay there anymore, at the bus depot, the night commuters are over because – the bus depot because – SUZANNE Give me your phone. (Suzanne gets it. Elsewhere, a Militia Man sprays gunfire into the air, falling over backwards, shot.) SUZANNE The soldier, a night flower, shooting holes in the stars, dying. BELLE‐ROSE (Continuing from “The bus depot because…”) One of the children strangled the other to death. (Winnie strangles Suzanne.) KATHY They go out there, between the trees. We pull them back. (Kathy reaches for Winnie, cannot grab her.) Dogsbody 1/12/10 13
TRAUMA 3. EVERY “ALSO” EQUALS DEATH One – Unable to Memorize (Oswald and Scovia. Oswald: Six different ways of putting on shoes, all wrong. Then ties himself into a shoelace bow, incorrectly. Scovia unknots him. She interlaces with him and makes a proper shoe bow. He forgets her; leaves her laced with negative shape. He goes on a journey, falling out of his shoes, and out of his shoes, and out of his shoes, shoes filled with water. He walks through a field of white flour; where he steps, black footprints left behind. Kata traced. Electrical circuitry. Light bulbs off and on, off.) Two – Trauma Uniform (Very early in the morning – Oswald cuts a navy blue school uniform out of the night sky. Hangs it up. He turns away, crosses for privacy, strips out of his pajamas; turns back. But the uniform has followed him, is behind him, pouring fine dirt on his head; the hole in the night is a door to the dirt house, and the uniform grabs dirt from the hole. Oswald wanders. The scissors he used to cut the hole become a bat. The sky is filled with scissor‐bats. A bat reaches through the falling dirt and bites him on the neck. He slows; he is buried. He becomes an undead pair of scissors, rising from the grave. Oswald flies off into the hole. The uniform seals it shut. Oswald is in night‐jail.) OSWALD Night falls twice before day breaks, because I was a soldier once. Three – Don’t Want to Dig (Oswald and his mother in two separate, small houses at a refugee center.) SCOVIA Oswald lives in a small house made of dirt. His mother lives in a small house made of dirt. His mother is a toy. (His Mother is trapped in her house, she’s knocking on the walls from the inside. He opens his door of his house and listens.) OSWALD Don’t want to dig. (He flies and spits on his Mother’s house.) SCOVIA The knocking stops. The soil where he spat blossoms bad ideas: Dogsbody 1/12/10 14
To be trapped behind metal. Standing up on a bicycle, downhill. Cooking. OSWALD These are not my ideas. Four – Rape, soldier, camp ankles (At the camp. He holds Scovia’s ankles.) MOTHER He looks at a girl, Scovia; he looks at the shoes she is wearing. All he can see is her shoes. He holds her ankles as she is raped. He is made out of dirt. Bad ideas come out of his mouth: the words of this scene. Dogsbody 1/12/10 15
TRAUMA 4. THE RAIN STARTS AGAIN WHEN YOU THINK IT HAS STOPPED (The stage is made ready four ways.) One – The rain starts again when you think it has stopped. [Epistolary.] (Kathy, a relief worker, writes a letter.) KATHY (Numbers unspoken, throughout.) {One.} It is deep in the night, when the behavior of certain creatures is at its most complicated. A small rat, a fragile spine. {Two.} A phone, no good if you had one. {Three.} One vehicle for the camp. {Four.} In the morning you learn Lakwena is dead. The camps are slowly emptying. Two – Phone, no phone. [Dance.] (Kathy helps make dinner. Scovia, Belle‐Rose, Winnie and Suzanne dance; fantastic drumming. Suzanne is separated out.) KATHY {Two.} You are out there in the mud in the dark doing your best. {Four.} In the morning, getting the beans for the guest in town you discover that the rebel founder is dead. {One.} Rain; it won’t rain all day but you are crowned with lightning as the sun goes down, clouds in a circle around you. {Three.} One van with 14 seats, 16 people in the camp, sixteen in the van, the trip for the beans. Three – Van [Music.] (Suzanne sings “Welcome Visitors,” solo, to violin.) KATHY {Three.} One van, in the rainy season, quit into the river. You can still see it there, no one was hurt. {One.} Rain in the rainy season is hammers. Rain out of season, as now, is hammers with cell phones, they come together from all over; heavy no metrics. Dogsbody 1/12/10 16
{Four.} Lakwena, Alice Lakwena, the excuse for Kony to happen, drinks a small gin in Kenya, goes to her stationery store and dies in the back. {Two.} Phone is not for free. Hold your knowledge. Four – Lakwena [Trauma.] (Kathy nurses Suzanne.) KATHY {Four.} Lakwena is dead. {Three.} One van for the community. {Two.} No phone. {One.} The rain starts again when you think it has stopped. (Suzanne gets up. She faces West. Winnie joins her, facing South. Belle‐Rose faces North. Scovia faces East.) Then he made a bronze altar twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high. He also made the molten sea. It rested on twelve oxen, three facing west, three facing south, three facing east, and three facing north; the sea rested on their backs. Solomon had all these articles made for the house of God: the golden altar, the tables on which the showbread lay, lamps of pure gold; bowls, cups and firepans of pure gold. When the trumpeters and singers were heard as a single voice praising and giving thanks to the Lord, the building of the Lord’s temple was filled with a cloud. The priests could not minister because of the cloud, since the Lord’s glory filled the house of God. Then Solomon said: “The Lord intends to live in the dark cloud.” When Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the holocaust and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house. The Play (At night in the dorm. Everyone is meant to be asleep.) SUZANNE Wake up. KATHY Under mosquito netting, disoriented, a low‐grade fever. BELLE‐ROSE, WINNIE Rain on the tin in witch‐black vertical. Dogsbody 1/12/10 17
KATHY Smell of the dormitory a clean, cooling bakery but where they fired green wood. BELLE‐ROSE, WINNIE Sour in the sweet. Behind your eyes, too red, and difficult to sleep. KATHY You lose possession of thinking the way rain subsides. BELLE‐ROSE, WINNIE Rain comes back All night long (Suzanne hands Scovia a small, carved figure.) SCOVIA What’s this? SUZANNE What? SCOVIA Suzanne, what are you handing me? SUZANNE You’re four years old. Your face is wiped, you’re perfect. (They try to sleep.) KATHY They are spun, sleeping clock hands lying in their sleep, around the round room. Suzanne faces west. In her sleeplessness, she wriggles out of hours. She is time‐noise souring the roundhouse watch‐face. There’s no sleep but exhaustion to the north, and the sorcerers are dying. No necessary obstacles to peace; no peace. Her eyes shut, but the batteries are charged and the lights inside her keep blinking. SCOVIA Sleep kisses her tart lips and distracts her from sleep. SUZANNE Shut up. The less attention paid the better. (Morning. Time to get up and go to work. Suzanne goes to the well.) WOMAN BY THE WELL Can you take two? Dogsbody 1/12/10 18
KATHY She can handle two cans of water, tick‐tocking fast, a heart attack metronome; the camp director’s bath. (A naked young man waits shivering in a blue plastic tub, his back to Suzanne.) SUZANNE I carry extra wheels inside me. I have power to burn. WOMAN BY THE WELL Take as much time as you want as long as you are fast, Suzanne. Be slow in a hurry. (A Militia Man waits for Suzanne at the end of the path. Jerrycans drop, all the water spills.) Dogsbody 1/12/10 19
TRAUMA 5. TONGUE One – Something comes out of his tongue. (Schoolroom. Concrete floor and walls, thatched roof. Evening sky through the door hole; no door. No glass in the windows.) WINNIE A flying ant. Smoke. The ant is death is light bulb light. The smoke is a twilight storm. Two – Zigzag Stack Thunderhead. WINNIE Invisible hands are betting all their clouds, pushing them across the table. It rains knives and forks onto an aluminum floor. (Militia Man and Belle‐Rose in the room. The entire body of the Belle‐Rose rests inside the Militia Man’s mouth.) In a small dark room, I am in his mouth. I am wholly in his mouth and he doesn’t matter. Three – Battles end in irrelevance, hunger and distance. (Many boys and girls wait out the storm, sitting on the floor. Across a golden floor, a silverware army. Elsewhere a person with a strong, heavy head. Forks compete over an empty plate. Many children, waiting.) DAVID So thirsty. (Heavy head is smaller and smaller.) Four – Man U Tee. (Storm is over. A slow air played on bone oboes. A dog eating something it shouldn’t, pulling at it, trying to pull it from its place. One boy, two boys, three boys, a dozen, clearing the barracks.) BELLE‐ROSE Years later they are still young, they are sixteen, they are a soccer team, with donated Man U tees. They play soccer with a human head. Dogsbody 1/12/10 20
(The head is completely indistinguishable from a regular soccer ball.) Five – The emptiness of the second guesthouse. (David and a Winnie, carrying water through tall grass.) DAVID (A secret.) I love you. WINNIE Because you can’t say anything else when you’re broke. (They separate. He arrives at a barracks.) He’s alone in the second guesthouse – a barracks identical to the first, but abandoned. Dusty. Stiff, filthy clothes hang from lines – the clothes of the dead. He commits suicide. Shoots himself in the mouth and doesn’t die, but he can’t stop bleeding black blood from his tongue. It covers the floor. The black pool is lightly dusted with white flour and white flowers that fall from the zigzag thunderhead. (End, Act One)
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ACT TWO ILIAD PART ONE: BATTLE A (One and Two are Commanders; Three and Four are adult soldiers. Dogface and Nipple are child soldiers. It is not clear who is on what side.) RADIO Dogface, a runner; AWOL; three years in then, up and down the hills – thirteen, eludes and home to his mother for counsel and support. THREE, FOUR (Dogface’s michyuki.) Heat of the day sliding moonside Larkspur closing like a dance about snow Slopes of relieving shadow Climbing, transecting, housing Him he – DOGFACE I am here now. (Mother approaches.) No. DOGFACE To see how you are. That’s all. ONE Mother gets him drunk to keep him with her. (Mother offers him wine.) MOTHER Drink wine for prayer. Drink wine for sleep. Smoke. Show me your weapons. Wear your hands out tearing the guns down and putting them back together. ONE Drinking wine with the mother and neighbors, she wanted him to miss muster and stay – DOGFACE To see you. See how you are. MOTHER You have to go back. Dogsbody 1/12/10 22
DOGFACE Why? Why do I have to go back? MOTHER They will kill me. They’ll kill us all, come back and kill you too. DOGFACE Who is “they”? MOTHER You. DOGFACE I’ll kill you? MOTHER Yes. DOGFACE You’re all I see. MOTHER Son, and I see you. As the rat sees the hawk. And yes, I’m all you see. Where is your father? Where is everyone else? If you stay, they’ll kill you, and me, and whatever else is left, whatever uncles are hiding in the ceilings or other mothers in the gas station restrooms. DOGFACE How do I go back? MOTHER Well to go back, you’ll need to do some work. You hold me, but I beat you. I plead. “Go, go.” But all of that is lies. I want you to stay. You have to. DOGFACE Then, goodbye. I’ll just go. MOTHER I hold you. Like this. To go, you’ve got work to do. Get to work. DOGFACE My head is empty. Dogsbody 1/12/10 23
THREE With the back of his hand he sees the sleepy golden bullets floating around the rose bushes. He rubs his cat gland up against the night marking it as the loved thing, even as he shifts his weight out from the grip. MOTHER Then – DOGFACE What to grab? A stove, a pot. What can move quickly in the air? A hand, a boot. But those are not sharper than the air. A tooth. But deeper. A knife, but the knives are hidden. A needle? Too fine. If I were going to kill you now, to make you the salted place you once were, I would – ah, there is no tactic. I beat you to death with a stone. I want to go home now. I want to go. (Having killed her.) O I am a drunk bastard. O that is too funny. (She’s dead. Makes a move to cover her with dust, her face with a shawl; he pulls the shawl back.) Let God see everything. ONE, DOGFACE It’s hard for me to decide on just one thing It’s hard for me to believe it’s come down to Just one thing To be present is to be divided FOUR Your beginning is in killing. THREE Full moon slips away quick before the sun comes up over the dunes, the In‐n‐Out Burger, the Chevron, the trailer‐supply. He lays his mother in the river. Washes himself, sleeps and dreams he’s clean. (Sleeps. Soldiers find him and take him back to camp.) Nine Days of Arrows (Dogface finds Nipple.) DOGFACE Sun comes up. NIPPLE Sun comes up. Dogsbody 1/12/10 24
FOUR Fourteen, twelve, ten year olds in the thirteenth year of war, Corpus Christi Texas. Dogface and Nipple have been at war three years each. ONE Put your clothes on. THREE Nicotine beer. TWO Names: God is Great What the Fuck Animal Style Master Rebel Prince The Angel Autonomous THREE And Gendark is a fungus made from spoiled bran out of the Dunkin Donuts, cut with gunpowder and boric acid. FOUR The one thing that must not be blown up, the one thing all parties will agree must not be cracked are the oil refineries. Not the lines in or out, or the roads leading up or away. An attack would put the country sick, cut support, and the money would go. RADIO An arrow made out of a coat hanger and pipe cleaners rattles down onto the clay. The first arrow of nine days of arrows. Arrows made of windshield wipers. Bowstrings made of intestines knotted together with school program condoms. (Heavy fighting.) I do not know when I begin a sentence if I will be talking about the living or the dead. THREE Day six we the arrows ping off the oil tanks, the regulators and hardened lines. One object is a flint and one subject is a flint and a thesis is a spark and there is a syllogism of hiss, smoke and boom, the rhetoric of flame. RADIO It rains a crap of diesel and crude. FOUR A bullet finds a vein in the throat of Nipple’s minder – a vein, not an artery, so – he can see but can’t speak to the runaway. Dogsbody 1/12/10 25
(Nipple escapes.) RADIO They fight this war with sneaker tongues, douche, Freon‐coils, maxillary mock ups from the dentist’s office. With their fingers, disease, theft, poverty, and panic. On the eighth day of arrows they take the fighting to a crescent perimeter around the Corpus Christi refineries. You can’t say if oil is entering the wounds or flowing out. Ninth day of arrows. Nothing. Nothing. A child called “God Is Great” purchases a cloak of invisibility from a fellow soldier, and moves towards the enemy. Since invisible, his eyes can’t gather images. They pass through. FOUR (GOD IS GREAT) Look up, taste codeine. RADIO Anonymous: He was invisible He could not die. He kissed death on the mouth And the bullet found his head, Where the spine meets the skull. His brain was destroyed, For his god did not love him But was cast in another play, Wrapped in the allure of a wholly different drama. The blood on the ground remains immobile and the land streams away under it. (End, Nine Days of Arrows.) Dogsbody 1/12/10 26
PART TWO: STALEMATE (Both sides gather and burn their corpses. Nipple’s escape.) RADIO Nearly home. Home. NIPPLE’S MOTHER A very smart uniform. NIPPLE No, it isn’t. I’m not an idiot. NIPPLE’S MOTHER But you’re back. What’s –? NIPPLE Think of another question. Quick. Quickly. NIPPLE’S MOTHER I can’t. (Finishing the question.) What was it like? NIPPLE Everybody. All the time. Long time. NIPPLE’S MOTHER When did you start smoking? I can smell it at the bottom of your lungs. NIPPLE Wipe my mouth. Wash my hands. (Gently picks up his baby brother.) RADIO In the same breath, Nipple reaches down for his brother, but the boy recoils, cringing against his mother’s full breast, screaming at the sight of his own brother, terrified… His loving brother laughs, his mother laughs as well. NIPPLE’S MOTHER (Loving both her children.) Dear branch in bloom. Dove like a star. RADIO There is no home for her. Nipple lives in retreat. When the heat comes up over the basalt, gypsum, schist. Dogsbody 1/12/10 27
NIPPLE’S MOTHER (Taking and quieting the baby.) You’re bleeding all over the map; six different ways. How will you not be strange? NIPPLE I’m staying. NIPPLE’S MOTHER No. You’re not. You’re my angel. Angels fly. NIPPLE Angels can do big things. NIPPLE’S MOTHER You got to go. NIPPLE Good things. I can – NIPPLE’S MOTHER Think of another thing to do. Let me turn my back. Please. RADIO Ask her if you would be better off dead. NIPPLE There are things you cannot ask the living. (He leaves his house. His mother sweeps with gathered broomstraw.) NIPPLE’S MOTHER I feel broomstraw across my body. Swept out the door. In the early drought we were sweeping dust out of the house all day, lay down with the dust at night. It still comes back sometimes, but more and more it has been pushed out, and the clay is swept down to a dead shine. RADIO Making tea out of cancer. Vegetables think he’s ridiculous. Night and day give him nothing. Roads take his knees. Autos powered by human hair; the mother’s hair, the shaved head. THREE He: vacancy, the suck of where he was; sister‐night is tooth rot and grandmother is the void moon. FOUR He plays guitar to the radio in the woods. Dogsbody 1/12/10 28
THREE Strings break. FOUR He plays the shadows of the strings. They hear him sometimes and not others, they can’t see him. THREE Batteries fail. FOUR He listens to the shadow of the radio. (Meanwhile, back at home, Nipple’s Mother to baby.) NIPPLE’S MOTHER Heart is beeping sine/cosine into the thin ambulance of flesh. Nipple is starving. Acid down his bones. He gorges on carnelians; vomits. TWO Nipple is killed in ambush in the woods. ONE (Facing away, washing.) Find him. THREE With the smoke of the dead stacking behind, we radiate to find the children who snotted away. THREE God, shadow from the mountain, enters him, steals knowledge of guitar. And wipes all arts of harping from her mind. FOUR Lacking guitar, he needs radio more. THREE On a stone, in a place, is a small battery standing. FOUR Bait. NIPPLE A battery. Dogsbody 1/12/10 29
FOUR Small battery waits good‐dog tall on the flat white stone. On the space in the space on the stone in the clearing he lynx‐crawls, sly, with all the superstitions of control. (Nipple leaves his radio and moves to the battery. Dogface finds the radio; doesn’t see Nipple.) TWO (Meanwhile, Soldiers approach Nipple.) Dialogue with the beetle, which is the bullet, which is coming for him. FOUR The bullet rubs its legs and chirrs, getting ready for him. BEETLE What have you been eating? NIPPLE Tarnish. FOUR Heart skin splitting like a lonely gravity. BEETLE What have you been thinking? NIPPLE Varnish. BEETLE Where will you sleep? NIPPLE Vanish. FOUR What will you do? NIPPLE Glue. FOUR A bullet makes him bloody, knocks him down and there he lies. THREE Enters his chest through his upper arm, left. Dogsbody 1/12/10 30
NIPPLE (Running out of life.) I am a moon to this. I am a moon away from here. I waste the sky and pee moon‐
yellow into the oiled river. BCDG. (One and Two find Nipple. They wait for him to stop breathing. A long time. They bury him with dust from Lime‐Ade Pixie Stix.) FOUR Having buried the dead, they refresh the troops with abduction. Abduction (A knock.) ABDUCTEE’S MOTHER This is a knock on a door. That’s all. Then a door from its hinges. This is the floor, the foot, my hands fluttering behind my head – the limit of my fear is almost peaceful, then – over the verge my daughter goes, my son goes, taken by a daughter, by a son. FOUR Abduction. Reaching through the blades of a fan, or into the motion of an animal with a foreign anatomy – a bug whose back opens for wings. YOUNGER DAUGHTER (Abductee.) O Jesus have mercy on me. RADIO Outside her younger daughter carrying a plastic can with water or milk, carrying it, yoked to two, or like schoolbooks, or on her head. The can cracks on the pavement or on a stone or on the dry, hard ground. She is fucked in the small mud made by the spill. Her mouth is stuffed with breeder parts and padlocked shut, after. YOUNGER DAUGHTER Iris made of shattered shadow Pupil made of light Chicken bone stretching pimpled skin A dog slipping on the fat of a kill he is in FOUR (Raping.) She is thirsty; I mix milk with oil in a cup made from a broken light bulb and I have her drink it, so the feeling of this will be in every hole. Her body will explode in the fire. I cover her eyes with a rag from the can of oil I will use to burn her house down. Making her lips soft enough to pierce with a padlock I beat her with a brick. Dogsbody 1/12/10 31
There is no refrigerator, pull milk hot from her dead mother’s breast. Laying them side‐by‐side, measuring them out. When out of hog intestines – those measured are killed. ABDUCTEE’S MOTHER We are down to one eyeball and our eyeball goes white. We are down to one house and it shakes. It walks down into the dust. The people who make Charcoal open their sacks and see the coal Has turned to ash. Those who drive nails discover their nails Are rotten flour; our hammers are clouds of weevils. I feel my heart and my hand has a bat beating against, Fighting against the wall. End of stalemate: Dogface weeps by the river, dreams. TWO Love includes this: THREE Where are you going, Dogface? DOGFACE The river. THREE What part of the river are you going to, Dogface? DOGFACE Where I lay my mother down. Where she made my liver pure And I washed my hands of this. World. Every. Thing. (He sleeps by the river.) RADIO Dogface, raider of cities, changeable mind, sleeps. There was a world in which – FOUR Fish went your way, like sheep. Dogsbody 1/12/10 32
DOGFACE Trees handed you bicycles. THREE Breath was the temperature of mountains. FOUR Mud was made out of Karo. DOGFACE Night had the head of a bear, the body of a mountain lion, the boots of a sergeant, and brought you cooked meat. MOTHER A point at which things were increasing – you were growing, as many changes you wasted on love there were changes remaining. The way you ate could not stop you. The way you sped or slept could not stop you. You weren’t finished yet. Before changes were numbered. (His Mother the river flows away.) FOUR Wakes with egg dripping on his face. There’s a snake in a tree, eating eggs from a nest. Dogface flips the snake away; eats the rest of the eggs and returns to war. He hides in anger, better than the night to thieves. Dogsbody 1/12/10 33
PART THREE: BATTLE B The suffering of the mother on the eve of battle A MOTHER When I am drunk they call me mother When I reach out, I touch wet petals ripped. While I live I am drunk; I am in a bag of knives. While I think, I knife. Knife goes round my head. Snake is a girdle at my waist. When I reach for the dead I want them to reach for me. I find my son in a nest of spiders in a pile of snake shit. I reach for my daughter and find her by the ankle under worms. When I am drunk they – I call myself – call me mother. Spirit talks to me when I sit in the chair. The knife across my throat is my tongue pronouncing resurrection. THREE There at the gates of the sky, the hours guard the stillness. Night will not move. (Sleep.) Then (Battle. Fierce fighting.) FOUR The troops pour down from Houston, baby. The fuel lines blow. But we got our trucks through from Brownsville, baby. Fat blood runs the streets like mercury. VICTIM My suffering is not even in my body anymore (Nipple, dead, narrates.) DOGFACE, THREE, FOUR High above the High above the plain See as I see Spirits working the battlefield God working the fields See as I see High above the plains The city is so far away so far away so far away The city is so far away so far away from you Dogsbody 1/12/10 34
PART FOUR: EBB TWO The earth is clearly the bottom of something. Earth is the hell of stars. (Dogface wars with dogs; gathers a dog and her litter into a sack.) RADIO He throws the firstlings into the fire. THREE (Re: One.) His wives take the razor to his head. Carefully, carefully. Grooming him. His head is a stone that will break the razor, and blame the razor for breaking. FOUR (Re: Two.) The opposition commander, who has always been decent – her jaw wears out from praying – steps back into shelter, letting the bodies pile. She drinks as silent as the coffee itself. TWO I left my hat at the puppet club, my head is a puppet, my skin is running silent away, white as caffeine, prized as cocaine, inert as chewed cane. I left my head at the puppet club where they were putting on the show of the Iliad, all the small falling. Waterfall of species, of media. Day is memory of night, thinned of thinking. (Soldiers loot the bodies.) THREE, FOUR Sun is slave of the sky Sun is slave of the sky On streaming ground The dizzy foot Makes trash of Concentration Panther takes Long‐leg chick From the pot’s corporation Rains come, promise peace I’ve never yet met a liar like the rain Dogsbody 1/12/10 35
PART FIVE: FLOW (Battle B Continues) (Rocket Man sleeps. Dogface finds him.) FOUR Asleep, he is made of metal, and he is given a metal whore. They couple, creaking, tanker cars straining. They are made of bronze. They are made of gold. They melt at the degree of burning fuel. THREE This is where Dogface is stabbing him to death. Killing his sleep and killing him in his sleep, spearing between the genitals and the navel, a hideous wound, the worst the god of battles deals to wretched men. The last of the fighting NIPPLE Highway empty, desert full. (War kaleidoscope.) RADIO Three mice row and sing in an inverted kneecap floating in a diarrhea colored puddle of diesel. (Someone else.) Being naked, he kept his severed ear in his mouth. (Elsewhere.) There’s a pod of dolphins lying breathless right in the middle of San Fernando road, after the storm. A three legged horse leans against a lamppost, breathing like a downbeat Jimmy Durante. Store windows melt to wave shapes. The wind tries on a sheet metal hat, throws it down against a methane tank. DOGFACE Let’s get down to Juarez and open Orange Crush bottles with our teeth. Play Space Invaders until that machine has to be our robot slave for a month, fixes all our sox. NIPPLE He has lost memory, sense of time, relative value, and reality. DOGFACE My head, my head. NIPPLE His mind – a root starch. Dogsbody 1/12/10 36
Down by the riverside/Death of Dogface THREE Screaming terror, all delight of battle forgotten, Dogface stands stupidly. NIPPLE He finds himself at the river. THREE Dogface sees a dead man under the water, eels and fish the corpse’s frenzied attendants, ripping into him, nibbling kidney fat away. RADIO His mother, dropped in the river, became the river. She is the god of the river. Speaks with her. “Too much!” she says. “Have done, captain of armies – I am filled with horror and cannot fit any more corpses!” THREE She holds him tightly; he is trapped in this monstrous river like some boy, some pig boy. DOGFACE Get away – MOTHER If you were ever to go away I would die. You go away a lot. You’ve done enough. You have to rest. Slow down, runner. Slow down. DOGFACE No, you – MOTHER It’s not your turn to talk. RADIO She, the river, takes him down to the sea and pursues him through the sea, and when, spent, she is diffuse and no longer knows her own mind, when she – water in water allayed, without anger or hope, dispersed, loses a river’s hands, the sea takes the wiped body, indifferent as a spent fish, irrelevant now in the thinking of the indestructibly minded ocean, and leaves Dogsbody up on the shore, where he is eaten by dogs. Portland. Rockport. Beeville. Sinton. Alice. Kingsville. Refugio. And the Aransas Pass. From Matagorda to Laguna the coast lies limp as an arm.
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PART SIX: AND RADIO Nipple escaped ambush; survives. Plays in a football game set up for the mass funerals. TWO Cows are massed in a high school stadium. They come in and steal a fat one. But it turns out to be pregnant; not much meat. They butcher it with a spatula and pinking shears – all their weapons decommissioned. The barbeque pit’s on the field. They’re smeared with coal and blood. Burning and breaking each other’s bones. One slips in the dung from the cow they’ve eaten. His face opens and they laugh and laugh and sweat and laugh. (Radio plays football; radio plays, radio plays.) FOUR (Re: Two.) She was in a bar, wearing a blue denim skirt and a white shirt. She was drinking a small Pepsi and gin. Her chin was down and she was dead of sepsis. Her hard organs soft. DOGFACE (Seeing Nipple, from death.) He survived under bodies. He returned home. He cooked for his legless mother. He came back to the war. NIPPLE Dead is dead. (End, Act Two) Dogsbody 1/12/10 38
ACT THREE MILK TRUCK “the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck.” – Adrienne Rich Open (The dead wait in a graveyard, crouched as if sitting in small chairs. Bog Man sings without lifting his head.) BOG MAN Straight back chair A long time waiting Toys in the air Water made of minutes. One (A playground over the graveyard. A house on a high hill. A green train, 1960. A glass blower in a tree.) BOG MAN A marble. Waxing the slide with Nik‐L‐Nip. Wax lips. Wax teeth. There’s a game you play with bottle caps filled with wax. BOG MAN AND LIVING CHILD Handfull of bottle caps; Fanta. BOG MAN Candle‐box. Raiding the fall‐out shelter for candles and matches. SHIRLEY (Looking out the window of her house.) Potter’s field. The indigent dead. Buried in the landfill, Croton Point. A peninsula in the river. A music camp. A playground. A graveyard. Switching yards, diesel fuel and a waste oil site. (Old, living people come to sit with the dead.) OLD WOMAN Old women, old men from the Worker house, come to mourn. Buried sitting, shallow, in a crouch. Coffin like a steamer trunk. Props from a magic act. JACK (Looking out the window of a train at a glass‐blown setting sun.) Jesus is s glass blower. Dogsbody 1/12/10 39
(The landscape is glass‐blown.) The shapes the glass took in the fire. SHIRLEY The landfill now peopled with many thin trees and transparent invisible shapes in the glassblower’s sky. Our dead boy a toy made of glass in the sky. DEAD SON Drunk, still drinking, Dad sleeps the train till Croton. OLD WOMAN Landfill chemicals tan, cure the small curled dead to leather fossils. Drinking, small bottles. DEAD SON Alcohol party. OLD WOMAN Buried curled, sitting posture. Hands on knees. DEAD SON Three or four other commuters all asleep in the car. Bottle‐bag‐bible conductor high. Dad curled asleep on train – commuter nation. SHIRLEY Hudson Local, green train days. (Wife gets up to walk around town. She inadvertently follows young children; they scatter away from her; she doesn’t notice.) OLD WOMAN Wife follows bloody footprints out of the room, pat‐pat‐pat dead‐boy memory. She follows out across the mortality of the many damaged, partial children around town. Wife has become a sake drinker. Her insides are blistered and her face at 50 beginning to erupt. Goes to the bathroom against the door, thinking she’s in. SHIRLEY AND JACK I will not sleep. I will not stop, I must not stop my drinking. Two CONDUCTOR Rainwater and maple leaf where the Potter’s Field, where Akeldama – BOG MAN A kind of game you play with bottle caps. Dogsbody 1/12/10 40
Children in the darkening playground. Children smeared to shine, the slide is silver as a guitar. CONDUCTOR Is reclaimed, the red and yellow maple leaves and tannin filters through the hidden dead and emerges by the diesel dump in a honeysuckle spring of mead, a natural honey wine. BOG MAN All walked dogs shining golden. OLD WOMAN A corpse‐based sake. A poor old whiskey. The people of the town stand in line with jerrycans, red, yellow, blue and fill them. They drink honeymoon. CONDUCTOR Everybody off. Switching yard. DEAD SON Tree‐clowns. Clowns sitting on the phone lines. BOG MAN It is dark when he walks home, when she walks home, she runs the TV as if someone were watching. Husband, wife approach the house separately, drunk, still drinking honeymoon wine of the impoverished dead. OLD WOMAN Their child dead by traffic. BOG MAN Radio saying normal, normal, normal. CONDUCTOR Homeless man makes extraordinary demands. (A Homeless Man on a boat projects a shadow onto the sheet of the Land with a bird skull puppet.) HOMELESS MAN I will sop all your rum balls, and eat all your fruit cake, I will drink all your nog. Make bacon! OLD WOMAN Hawk down from a telephone pole to tear out the heart of something. The day, failing, makes all things real. The day mixes its salt and fresh and runs passive through marshes to the sea. Pulls out the heart of something, something in the road. Dogsbody 1/12/10 41
BOG MAN Jack spits a fiber or shell or pulp from his mouth. OLD WOMAN Shirley walks by the watch factory, the hardware store, and the diner that can never make it work no matter how nice the owners. Shirley leans her body into the hill and climbs the high street from town‐side; Jack from riverside, to the house up there. (A globe breaks and night comes out of it.) Three DEAD SON Not yet self diagnosed he is carrying crabs. OLD WOMAN She has spent out the mortgage account buying a small boat for a homeless man to sleep in. (The dance of this.) This is the boat, this is the sleep, this is the sleeping man in the boat. DEAD SON He is with three invisible men; all of them are having a hard time deciding if they’re putting on their jackets or taking them off. OLD WOMAN The homeless man who found their boy, dead from a milk truck, feet to the curb and head in the gutter. HOMELESS MAN (Finding the Dead Son, dead, though not in person.) Hello. CONDUCTOR Sweat dries while they are looking up. A dry, clear night. OLD WOMAN The inside of her head rocks like a homeless boat. His boat; belly of his boat. Can’t ever truly get away from machine sounds. The unavailable beach. A large abandoned factory by a large, abandoned highway overpass, gutted by the lady arsonists CONDUCTOR They stop in their tracks, independent of each other. Dogsbody 1/12/10 42
They are suspects; they are a war of moons. Separately, but at the same time, sweat dries from their faces, The risen fat at papery sheen. Their own mistakes, the mistakes of others. How a boy can step from a curb into a totally different existence. HOMELESS MAN And – we’re awake! Balm Stop Fade BOG MAN Murmur. OLD WOMAN Blood in his haircut. SHIRLEY, JACK You will be home. That’s fine. CONDUCTOR The moon won’t sky and the river forgets where it hid its money. DEAD SON Gravity in water is brain damage. Magpie steals a button from your coat. Heart skein untwists. OLD WOMAN Something in this hand, something in this hand. Now when we see her she is walking the dog and carrying a cup of coffee. SHIRLEY (Under above.) Saint Bean. Bitter, bitter. Whoa, I hate this shit. OLD WOMAN (also overlapping.) Eye‐twitch coffee. SHIRLEY Strong my strong, strong coffee. OLD WOMAN She is the one who will bury the dog, lift it to its hole. Soon. Wait. Dogsbody 1/12/10 43
CONDUCTOR They turn to the hill. They go home. Interlude (The death of her son and the immediate aftermath. The boy stands afraid before the oncoming truck.) BOG MAN Perseus and Medusa. Medusachrist without the Christ. The milk truck semi‐froze him. He compared her briefly to the mirror – SHIRLEY He didn’t get out of the way of the truck because he was comparing his prophecy of how the collision would feel to its actual unfolding. Did not take much time, but – enough OLD WOMAN The driver of the milk truck. Driver goes home and forces himself on his wife. (Shirley is at the door, listening.) Shirley hears this. She’d goes over to ask for apology. Had been advised: no legal case; no money in it, anywhere. DRIVER’S WIFE Wait. Wait. Yes. Yes. No. No, wait. Wait. Oh, all right. OLD WOMAN Doesn’t interrupt because he is so bad in bed. Ashamed for him. CONDUCTOR Jack’s answer is to get the milk maid drunk and recount hilarious adventures in the air force. She answers him with the story of Rachel and Leah. DRIVER’S WIFE “And here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep.” He rolls the stone from the mouth kisses Rachel and begins to weep. What Should Wages Be? Leah had weak eyes Rachel lovely Jacob loves her. “I'll work seven years.” Laban takes Leah, Give her to Jacob, Jacob lays; morning comes, there is Leah! “One more week one more Rachel another seven years’ labor, seven years.” Jacob lays with Rachel. Lord sees Leah isn’t loved, he opens her womb, Rachel’s barren. Dogsbody 1/12/10 44
Leah gives birth to a son. She conceives again. She conceives again she says, "Now at last my husband Lean to me, I’ve borne you three." Conceives again, she says – Then stops having children. Rachel isn’t bearing; “Give me children, or I'll die!” Gives her maid, Bilah. Bilhah bears. “God gives me a son.” Bilhah bears. “I have won.” Leah's maid Zilpah gives another. And another. “How happy I am! Women will call me happy.” “Give me some of your son's mandrakes.” “You took my husband, you’ll take my mandrakes too?” “He can sleep with you for mandrakes.” “Sleep with me, I’ve hired you with my son's mandrakes.” God bear Jacob a son. And a son. She conceives again a daughter she names her Dinah. God remembers Rachel; opens her womb. Bears Joseph, a son. “May the Lord add to me another son –” OLD WOMAN Homeless man takes sunburn skin off Shirley’s arm like rice paper Four CONDUCTOR The boat has no keel and will slide onto shore; working the radii of Haverstraw, drifting, filing, rocking, the boat with no keel will, will. OLD WOMAN Will sleep together. BOG MAN They sleep in the same bed, unhealed, doomed, and at peace, a double weight, bed freight, unargued. Snail crawls out of her womb. Bat eats its way out of his head. OLD WOMAN Glass‐head girl. Watch the play of fluids in her brain. Dogsbody 1/12/10 45
CONDUCTOR The homeless man, sleeping sitting, nodding off, used to be a monster. An actual monster. Diabetes cut him apart. And various diseases. BOG MAN The story of the path of the moon, of the crab, of the sign of July, the son, the end of a cycle which means the moment before you call it a cycle and the boats go out and day – CONDUCTOR Dead in boxes, all boxed, waiting by the dead, how I store/how to restore the dead, my dead, my drink. OLD WOMAN They do not hold each other in the bed but they hold the bed. She cut off her hair and gave it to the cancer ward in a braid tied with white ribbon. BOG MAN How do we forgive? Never. How do you get to never? Wait. OLD WOMAN She used cocoa butter on her belly and the marks mostly went away. If it weren’t for gravity she’d be 35, the year she had their baby. BOG MAN How do you get to, get to your mourning? Never. Wait. CONDUCTOR Jesus as the risen lord is discovered in emptiness through an act of mourning; that hollow tomb the holiest place. If they had waited there, they would have seen it. Improve mourning to include more waiting. SHIRLEY A few more minutes and my world is mine again. 6 minutes. Five The door keeps opening, letting the world in. Soon it will let me out Am I missing anything? Something I need to move? Three minutes. Not yet. I am not missing anything yet Two minutes. Although I will. Miss it. What minute frees me? Frees me from what? The job of remembering this. If I fail to forget, then I will be missing the mark. Dogsbody 1/12/10 46
JACK, SHIRLEY Make my waiting mourning, make me wait, make me wait. Make my mourning ready, make me ready, mourning, waiting. Wait out my striving, mourn me, I am waiting, waiting. Forgive my every dying, wait, I am forgiving the dead for making me wait. Forget I ever died, now I’m ready, waiting. Waiting is half of giving, now I’m given, for waiting. DEAD SON The liquor of the dead in debris bottles, Working up through sand. You remember what you held in your red hand. Make bone‐meal bread of normal Waiting, forget personal Paths to biography, Eat pages of history; The day to come is given And received in advance. Forgiveness Live less Ness Down to Noun Now (They sleep slumped, sitting, side by side, like the dead.) The End Dogsbody 1/12/10 FORGIVENESS by Erik Ehn 1
FORGIVENESS “the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck.” – Adrienne Rich Open (The dead wait in a graveyard, crouched as if sitting in small chairs. Bog Man sings without lifting his head.) BOG MAN Straight back chair A long time waiting Toys in the air Water made of minutes. One (A playground over the graveyard. A house on a high hill. A green train, 1960. A glass blower in a tree.) BOG MAN A marble. Waxing the slide with Nik‐L‐Nip. Wax lips. Wax teeth. There’s a game you play with bottle caps filled with wax. BOG MAN AND LIVING CHILD Handfull of bottle caps; Fanta. BOG MAN Candle‐box. Raiding the fall‐out shelter for candles and matches. SHIRLEY (Looking out the window of her house.) Potter’s field. The indigent dead. Buried in the landfill, Croton Point. A peninsula in the river. A music camp. A playground. A graveyard. Switching yards, diesel fuel and a waste oil site. (Old, living people come to sit with the dead.) OLD WOMAN Old women, old men from the Worker house, come to mourn. Buried sitting, shallow, in a crouch. Coffin like a steamer trunk. Props from a magic act. JACK (Looking out the window of a train at a glass‐blown setting sun.) Jesus is s glass blower. (The landscape is glass‐blown.) The shapes the glass took in the fire. Forgiveness 4/1/11 2
SHIRLEY The landfill now peopled with many thin trees and transparent invisible shapes in the glassblower’s sky. Our dead boy a toy made of glass in the sky. DEAD SON Drunk, still drinking, Dad sleeps the train till Croton. OLD WOMAN Landfill chemicals tan, cure the small curled dead to leather fossils. Drinking, small bottles. DEAD SON Alcohol party. OLD WOMAN Buried curled, sitting posture. Hands on knees. DEAD SON Three or four other commuters all asleep in the car. Bottle‐bag‐bible conductor high. Dad curled asleep on train – commuter nation. SHIRLEY Hudson Local, green train days. (Wife gets up to walk around town. She inadvertently follows young children; they scatter away from her; she doesn’t notice.) OLD WOMAN Wife follows bloody footprints out of the room, pat‐pat‐pat dead‐boy memory. She follows out across the mortality of the many damaged, partial children around town. Wife has become a sake drinker. Her insides are blistered and her face at 50 beginning to erupt. Goes to the bathroom against the door, thinking she’s in. SHIRLEY AND JACK I will not sleep. I will not stop, I must not stop my drinking. Two CONDUCTOR Rainwater and maple leaf where the Potter’s Field, where Akeldama – BOG MAN A kind of game you play with bottle caps. Children in the darkening playground. Children smeared to shine, the slide is silver as a guitar. Forgiveness 4/1/11 3
CONDUCTOR Is reclaimed, the red and yellow maple leaves and tannin filters through the hidden dead and emerges by the diesel dump in a honeysuckle spring of mead, a natural honey wine. BOG MAN All walked dogs shining golden. OLD WOMAN A corpse‐based sake. A poor old whiskey. The people of the town stand in line with jerrycans, red, yellow, blue and fill them. They drink honeymoon. CONDUCTOR Everybody off. Switching yard. DEAD SON Tree‐clowns. Clowns sitting on the phone lines. BOG MAN It is dark when he walks home, when she walks home, she runs the TV as if someone were watching. Husband, wife approach the house separately, drunk, still drinking honeymoon wine of the impoverished dead. OLD WOMAN Their child dead by traffic. BOG MAN Radio saying normal, normal, normal. CONDUCTOR Homeless man makes extraordinary demands. (A Homeless Man on a boat projects a shadow onto the sheet of the Land with a bird skull puppet.) HOMELESS MAN I will sop all your rum balls, and eat all your fruit cake, I will drink all your nog. Make bacon! OLD WOMAN Hawk down from a telephone pole to tear out the heart of something. The day, failing, makes all things real. The day mixes its salt and fresh and runs passive through marshes to the sea. Pulls out the heart of something, something in the road. BOG MAN Jack spits a fiber or shell or pulp from his mouth. Forgiveness 4/1/11 4
OLD WOMAN Shirley walks by the watch factory, the hardware store, and the diner that can never make it work no matter how nice the owners. Shirley leans her body into the hill and climbs the high street from town‐side; Jack from riverside, to the house up there. (A globe breaks and night comes out of it.) Three DEAD SON Not yet self diagnosed he is carrying crabs. OLD WOMAN She has spent out the mortgage account buying a small boat for a homeless man to sleep in. (The dance of this.) This is the boat, this is the sleep, this is the sleeping man in the boat. DEAD SON He is with three invisible men; all of them are having a hard time deciding if they’re putting on their jackets or taking them off. OLD WOMAN The homeless man who found their boy, dead from a milk truck, feet to the curb and head in the gutter. HOMELESS MAN (Finding the Dead Son, dead, though not in person.) Hello. CONDUCTOR Sweat dries while they are looking up. A dry, clear night. OLD WOMAN The inside of her head rocks like a homeless boat. His boat; belly of his boat. Can’t ever truly get away from machine sounds. The unavailable beach. A large abandoned factory by a large, abandoned highway overpass, gutted by the lady arsonists CONDUCTOR They stop in their tracks, independent of each other. They are suspects; they are a war of moons. Separately, but at the same time, sweat dries from their faces, The risen fat at papery sheen. Forgiveness 4/1/11 5
Their own mistakes, the mistakes of others. How a boy can step from a curb into a totally different existence. HOMELESS MAN And – we’re awake! Balm Stop Fade BOG MAN Murmur. OLD WOMAN Blood in his haircut. SHIRLEY, JACK You will be home. That’s fine. CONDUCTOR The moon won’t sky and the river forgets where it hid its money. DEAD SON Gravity in water is brain damage. Magpie steals a button from your coat. Heart skein untwists. OLD WOMAN Something in this hand, something in this hand. Now when we see her she is walking the dog and carrying a cup of coffee. SHIRLEY (Under above.) Saint Bean. Bitter, bitter. Whoa, I hate this shit. OLD WOMAN (also overlapping.) Eye‐twitch coffee. SHIRLEY Strong my strong, strong coffee. OLD WOMAN She is the one who will bury the dog, lift it to its hole. Soon. Wait. CONDUCTOR They turn to the hill. They go home. Forgiveness 4/1/11 6
Interlude (The death of her son and the immediate aftermath. The boy stands afraid before the oncoming truck.) BOG MAN Perseus and Medusa. Medusachrist without the Christ. The milk truck semi‐froze him. He compared her briefly to the mirror – SHIRLEY He didn’t get out of the way of the truck because he was comparing his prophecy of how the collision would feel to its actual unfolding. Did not take much time, but – enough OLD WOMAN The driver of the milk truck. Driver goes home and forces himself on his wife. (Shirley is at the door, listening.) Shirley hears this. She’d goes over to ask for apology. Had been advised: no legal case; no money in it, anywhere. DRIVER’S WIFE Wait. Wait. Yes. Yes. No. No, wait. Wait. Oh, all right. OLD WOMAN Doesn’t interrupt because he is so bad in bed. Ashamed for him. CONDUCTOR Jack’s answer is to get the milk maid drunk and recount hilarious adventures in the air force. She answers him with the story of Rachel and Leah. DRIVER’S WIFE “And here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep.” He rolls the stone from the mouth kisses Rachel and begins to weep. What Should Wages Be? Leah had weak eyes Rachel lovely Jacob loves her. “I'll work seven years.” Laban takes Leah, Give her to Jacob, Jacob lays; morning comes, there is Leah! “One more week one more Rachel another seven years’ labor, seven years.” Jacob lays with Rachel. Lord sees Leah isn’t loved, he opens her womb, Rachel’s barren. Leah gives birth to a son. She conceives again. She conceives again she says, "Now at last my husband Forgiveness 4/1/11 7
Lean to me, I’ve borne you three." Conceives again, she says – Then stops having children. Rachel isn’t bearing; “Give me children, or I'll die!” Gives her maid, Bilah. Bilhah bears. “God gives me a son.” Bilhah bears. “I have won.” Leah's maid Zilpah gives another. And another. “How happy I am! Women will call me happy.” “Give me some of your son's mandrakes.” “You took my husband, you’ll take my mandrakes too?” “He can sleep with you for mandrakes.” “Sleep with me, I’ve hired you with my son's mandrakes.” God bear Jacob a son. And a son. She conceives again a daughter she names her Dinah. God remembers Rachel; opens her womb. Bears Joseph, a son. “May the Lord add to me another son –” OLD WOMAN Homeless man takes sunburn skin off Shirley’s arm like rice paper Four CONDUCTOR The boat has no keel and will slide onto shore; working the radii of Haverstraw, drifting, filing, rocking, the boat with no keel will, will. OLD WOMAN Will sleep together. BOG MAN They sleep in the same bed, unhealed, doomed, and at peace, a double weight, bed freight, unargued. Snail crawls out of her womb. Bat eats its way out of his head. OLD WOMAN Glass‐head girl. Watch the play of fluids in her brain. Forgiveness 4/1/11 8
CONDUCTOR The homeless man, sleeping sitting, nodding off, used to be a monster. An actual monster. Diabetes cut him apart. And various diseases. BOG MAN The story of the path of the moon, of the crab, of the sign of July, the son, the end of a cycle which means the moment before you call it a cycle and the boats go out and day – CONDUCTOR Dead in boxes, all boxed, waiting by the dead, how I store/how to restore the dead, my dead, my drink. OLD WOMAN They do not hold each other in the bed but they hold the bed. She cut off her hair and gave it to the cancer ward in a braid tied with white ribbon. BOG MAN How do we forgive? Never. How do you get to never? Wait. OLD WOMAN She used cocoa butter on her belly and the marks mostly went away. If it weren’t for gravity she’d be 35, the year she had their baby. BOG MAN How do you get to, get to your mourning? Never. Wait. CONDUCTOR Jesus as the risen lord is discovered in emptiness through an act of mourning; that hollow tomb the holiest place. If they had waited there, they would have seen it. Improve mourning to include more waiting. SHIRLEY A few more minutes and my world is mine again. 6 minutes. Five The door keeps opening, letting the world in. Soon it will let me out Am I missing anything? Something I need to move? Three minutes. Not yet. I am not missing anything yet Two minutes. Although I will. Miss it. What minute frees me? Frees me from what? The job of remembering this. If I fail to forget, then I will be missing the mark. JACK, SHIRLEY Make my waiting mourning, make me wait, make me wait. Forgiveness 4/1/11 9
Make my mourning ready, make me ready, mourning, waiting. Wait out my striving, mourn me, I am waiting, waiting. Forgive my every dying, wait, I am forgiving the dead for making me wait. Forget I ever died, now I’m ready, waiting. Waiting is half of giving, now I’m given, for waiting. DEAD SON The liquor of the dead in debris bottles, Working up through sand. You remember what you held in your red hand. Make bone‐meal bread of normal Waiting, forget personal Paths to biography, Eat pages of history; The day to come is given And received in advance. Forgiveness Live less Ness Down to Noun Now (They sleep slumped, sitting, side by side, like the dead.) The End Forgiveness 4/1/11 UNA CARROÑA by Erik Ehn 1
UNA CARROÑA (Rose of Lima)
(An empty dark room made out of wide wood planks. A knock on a door. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2,
3, 4. A twelve year old girl slides into view backwards, sitting. She is in a cook's white
clothes. There is a great red stain from her vagina. She drags herself to the upstage wall.
She is dying quietly and alone in a ditch at night. Her eyes point in their final direction;
see nothing; reflect death.)
GIRL
Holy Saint Rose, oh Rose, sing for us. A sad song of mourning, a march for the just. In the dust,
in the heat, tell the tale by the well. Like a thief in the night, drag their souls down to hell.
(A woman is revealed; she is under interrogation. She has a shirt on, but no skirt. She
feels humiliation, sitting in her underwear before an unseen audience of men.)
WOMAN
I deny my earlier statement and damn my soul to hell in the presence of Rose of Lima. Rose of
Lima.
(1, 2, 3, 4. Rose enters and kneels, elsewhere.)
ROSE
Cannot be alone enough. So many dying alone. Cannot repent enough. So much flesh for the
devil to set his purchase in.
(Rose's mother enters and knocks, with a different sound.)
MOTHER
Rose?
WOMAN
The night of November 16.
GIRL
Rose?
WOMAN
I did not see the men cross through the priests' gate before the Oscar Romero residence at the
UCA. I do not name the residence pointedly, that is the name by which I know it.
ROSE (Praying.)
I will please them. I will please them. Only let me suffer effectively.
(Mother exits.)
WOMAN
I know who you are. I know this man is a colonel from my own country. I have never been out of
El Salvador in my life. I do not like this city. Yes, back to undo my story.
(Mother enters with a dress over one arm. Knocks.)
Una Carroňa 1/12/10 2
MOTHER
Rose?
ROSE
Mother, I am praying.
GIRL
Rose?
WOMAN
The men I did not see in combat fatigues had not come by this campus earlier to ransack the files
of the priests. Has my family eaten? Are they still in the hall?
MOTHER
I have a pretty dress.
WOMAN
They found enough to kill them for. I'm sorry. They found enough to prosecute them for. But
they did not prosecute. I am saying that of course they would have been justified in killing them.
Because they called for land reform and food. Which is to say they quoted the gospel from the
pulpit. Surely unnatural and incendiary. The six of them. The six Jesuits. I am damning my soul
to hell with these words. Look at me when I'm lying to you.
ROSE
Surely there is something I own already, far more beautiful than any dress.
(Mother exits. 1, 2, 3, 4 knocks on the door, as she crosses.)
WOMAN
I remember more clearly the incidents from farther back. The incidents that other people have
sworn never happened. Those I am allowed to know. The four church women at the roadblock.
Something comical about religious women, women in a group. Something goofy.
(Four nuns enter. They each lift one foot off the ground as if they are about to fly, and
then they drop.)
Goofy like felled birds. How stupid these women were - to stand, or to run. To be here. And
surely Romero who never stood at the altar never fell forward into his leaping blood. If he had, it
would have been because he was instructing peasants how to make weapons out of the corn cobs
they steal from pig troughs. Nothing happens. No one falls. And no saints in heaven can suffer
enough to absolve the sin of my recantation. I hate this city. Saint Rose!
(Mother enters, knocks. A boy, just a boy, in a suit, is in tow.)
MOTHER: Rose?
GIRL
Rose?
Una Carroňa 1/12/10 3
ROSE
I am nearly the Rose of Lima now, mother.
MOTHER
I have a groom, Rose. A boy to marry.
ROSE
Mother, I am praying.
WOMAN
This is the last little bit of what I did not see that night.
MOTHER
This is the third time you have refused me.
(She exits with the groom. 1, 2, 3, 4 as they go. Rose lets her dress off her shoulders; she
is wearing a corset of thorns. She tightens the corset. 1, 2, 3, 4.)
ROSE
Not come in. Not anything. Cannot be simple enough.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
WOMAN
They knocked. And one of the priests opened the door. I live in El Salvador. One of the priests
opened the door. I did not see these things. Priests came quietly, assuming it was more
questioning. 70,000 dead in El Salvador in ten years. Ten. Rose.
(Mother enters.)
MOTHER
Rose.
GIRL
Rose? I won't ask again.
MOTHER
Rose. We have lost all our money. Your father's mines have failed. Will you help us?
ROSE (Cutting crosses into her upper arms with a knife.)
Of course, mother. It is in me to do that. I will take in sewing.
WOMAN
70,000. And the priests out there. The moist night flat. Smell of roses in the small tight yard.
ROSE
Everyone needs new clothes. I will not take new clothes. But I will make them. Dresses for girls.
Special occasions. Funerals. First funerals. So many die thin. Narrow dresses. Narrow shroud. So
much agony. Go away.
Una Carroňa 1/12/10 4
(Mother exits. 1, 2, 3, 4.)
WOMAN
They knocked.
ROSE
There was an answer.
WOMAN
The priest came to the door.
ROSE
And went back to get the others.
WOMAN
They gathered.
ROSE
Stood ready to discourse, to answer all questions in the high quick desperate voices the army
likes. Each one was shot in the head.
WOMAN
What is the death of priests and nuns when so many die? Except that priests and nuns are dressed
in our flag, in the people's flag. The black flag of anarchy. Love and conscience being above the
laws. The terrible, brutal, mortally threatening anarchy of love. The poison, the pirate black love.
ROSE
They were dragging the bodies to the ditches when they heard the cook and her daughter evading
moonlight inside. The soldiers caught them both, and shot them between the legs. They bled to
death slowly; crawled to each other and spooned.
WOMAN
The men combed the area for other witnesses, but found none. They assumed that the
camouflage fatigues they wore made them as invisible as gods, when they so plainly made them
the visible arm of the mystical body of the devil. I was yards away. I was praying to St. Rose. I
saw none of this. I saw no one die. I did not cross the street after the soldiers left to enter and
close the eyes of the cook's daughter.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
ROSE
Paul, come in, but don't let mama in.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
Paul, come in. I have set up the room for a game.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
Paul, come in. We can play hermit. I am praying to Catherine of Sienna.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
Una Carroňa 1/12/10 5
Paul, come in. I am ten years old again. I am alive. I did not die at 31, killed by strict penance,
killed trying to mortify my flesh past the reach of the devil. You are seven. you are my brother.
(1, 2, 3, 4.)
Paul, come in. We will play hermit in the roses. We will make a perfect world. Paul, come in!
(A soldier bursts in. Surprised and confused.)
SOLDIER (To Rose.)
Who are you?
WOMAN
I saw nothing. And even so, I saw this, this happened.
WOMAN AND ROSE
The scene is a road in a jungle at night
As wild as a young lover's heart
Drizzle and music and laughter, then fright
As the bushes by the roadblock part
Four girls in a jeep step quick to the ground
Their old weathered hands in the air
They stare like cougars and the M-16s pound
The power of death through their hair
A man in his prime is folding, unfolding
His hands and his love for us all
As he offers his guests the bread he is holding
The assassin walks down the hall
Six in a building named for this man
Are summoned by a drumming so bold
Four nuns, an archbishop, six priests, many thousands
How many can the ditches of El Salvador hold?
Una carroña
It's once over lightly
The moon shining brightly
On the nightly quota
Una carroña
Another dead Jesuit
I like the sound of it
On the Voice of America
Una carroña
The rot and stagnation
The beer and malaria
Una Carroňa 1/12/10 6
The abomination
Una carroña
Another dead nun
The work's never don
When you join the militia
Holy Saint Rose, oh Rose, sing for us
A sad song of mourning, a march for the just
In the dust, in the heat, tell the tale by the well
Then like a thief in the night drag their souls down to hell
Una carroña
It's once over lightly
The moon shining brightly
On the nightly quota
Una carroña
Stack them up at the wall
Cut their tendons, make them crawl
Across the arena
Una carroña
Slaughter the mother
Then run down the daughter
Shoot her in the vagina
Una carroña
Hide your badges, hide your badges
Cover fire flashes
Stars and bars in aurora
Una carroña
The lightning of Zion
In the eyes of the icon
Of Saint Rose of Lima
WOMAN
And the final words of the priest were:
ROSE (Rising. Directly to the soldier.)
Esta es una injusticia. Es una carroña!
The End
Una Carroňa 1/12/10